Root Apps2sd: why am I already out of space?

[_mw_]

My intro thread.

Here's the scoop; I recently picked up a Droid Eris. First time with Android, and I can't leave well enough alone. I installed the Amon_RA recovery, flashed PlainJaneT2, installed setCPU, partitioned my SD with a 32mb swap, 768mb ext3 and the rest is Fatty32 deposits. Installed bloat freezer and let the default apps know what I thought of them (I know PlainJane has a flashable bloatware delete, but it never deleted anything for me).

So as with I'm sure thousands of others this morning I decided to go get Plants vs Zombies. Except Amazon Appstore is telling me I have no room to install it. Wth?

I double checked, /system/sd/app/ has 623.81mb free of 686.38. I also double checked the symlinks for app and app-private were both pointing at /system/sd/app(-private). They are.

So why is it telling me I'm out of space? Do some apps force themselves onto internal memory regardless of apps2sd? How come /system/app is showing only 23.34mb free, and Settings > SD Card & phone storage is showing 75mb free?

Sorry if this has been asked, I searched on nearly half a dozen forums. Most of the results are either people physically out of space or trying to install apps2sd.

 

[lunatic59]

If I understand apps2sd correctly, it only moves installed apps to the sd card, so if you don't have enough space to install it, then it will fail. Apps may be set to install in the default location (which is the phone's internal memory) or hard coded to install in a specific memory space.

You can change the default location to the SD card if you want to. And, once that is changed you can move even more apps tot he SD card, even though they were installed to internal memory.

If you want to move more apps to the SD card, you'll need to have the Android SDK installed. How-To Install Android SDK On Windows, Mac and Linux

Then on your phone go to settings>applications>development and enable USB Debugging. Plug your phone into the PC using the USB cable.

open a command prompt on your PC (start>run type "cmd" press ENTER)

Change directory to the android-sdk-windows\tools folder

At the prompt type

adb devices

and you should see your phone listed as a serial number.

type

adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2

Done.

Now the default location to install apps is the SD card. And, some apps that you couldn't move to the SD card will now be able to be moved. Keep in mind Widgets and services should always be installed to the phone and not the SD card, so if you follow the steps above and you install a widget afterwards, you will need to go to settings>applications>manage applications and manually move it to the phone. If you want to set the default install location back to the phone, you simply repeat the process but use

adb shell setInstallLocation 0

All that said, I don't know if that will allow the the app to look at available space in the default location and install, or still look at the internal memory. If it doesn't work, you could always uninstall a bunch of apps until you get the game installed and moved to SD, then reinstall the old apps.

Appbrain makes it easier to keep track of your apps.

A lot of trouble for zombies, but I hope this helped, nonetheless.

 

[_mw_]

I don't even care if that solution works, that is one of the most detailed responses I have ever received to a question in the past ten years. I'll definitely post back and let you know how it goes though, thank you! Didn't realize apps2sd wasn't automatically configured to continue using the sd card for new installations, though I suppose that should have occurred to me.

 

[lunatic59]

I don't even care if that solution works, that is one of the most detailed responses I have ever received to a question in the past ten years. I'll definitely post back and let you know how it goes though, thank you! Didn't realize apps2sd wasn't automatically configured to continue using the sd card for new installations, though I suppose that should have occurred to me.

Welcome to the most helpful forum on the internet. A lot better than app ... those other guys

 

[metlcat]

My intro thread.

Here's the scoop; I recently picked up a Droid Eris. First time with Android, and I can't leave well enough alone. I installed the Amon_RA recovery, flashed PlainJaneT2, installed setCPU, partitioned my SD with a 32mb swap, 768mb ext3 and the rest is Fatty32 deposits. Installed bloat freezer and let the default apps know what I thought of them (I know PlainJane has a flashable bloatware delete, but it never deleted anything for me).

So as with I'm sure thousands of others this morning I decided to go get Plants vs Zombies. Except Amazon Appstore is telling me I have no room to install it. Wth?

I double checked, /system/sd/app/ has 623.81mb free of 686.38. I also double checked the symlinks for app and app-private were both pointing at /system/sd/app(-private). They are.

So why is it telling me I'm out of space? Do some apps force themselves onto internal memory regardless of apps2sd? How come /system/app is showing only 23.34mb free, and Settings > SD Card & phone storage is showing 75mb free?

Sorry if this has been asked, I searched on nearly half a dozen forums. Most of the results are either people physically out of space or trying to install apps2sd.

What you might want to try first is changing from PlainJane to xtrSense. xtrSense has a thing called cache2cache built in that opens an unused section of internal memory for use by applications. I believe the thread says you can have over 100 apps without a problem. Apps2sd is nice, but it can cause problems since this phone is not made to do that.

xtrSense: [ROM][GPL][3/15/2011] xtrSENSE5.0.1 [cache2cache,apps2sd,oc,jit]-HTC Sense - xda-developers

Install it just like you did plainJane, and you'll be all set to go (don't forget to make a nand backup). PlainJane is somewhat out dated now. Many people still use it, but xtrSense is the most up to date 2.1 Eris ROM out there.

 

[_mw_]

lunatic59,
Took me a bit to find some time to give your solution a try. Further delayed due to the hassle of installing adb drivers on Win7x64. Thankfully it wasn't difficult, just a huge pita. Once my device was recognized by adb I gave the setInstallLocation command a try and was immediately greeted with a not found response.

Upon further inspection it appears setInstallLocation is 2.2 Froyo and above? I might have forgot to mention that I'm running Eclair, if I did sorry!

I need to look more into what is actually happening with apps2sd but I thought part of the equation was the symlinks; while the phone is under the impression its installing apps to the internal memory it's in actual fact unwittingly installing them to the sd card? I know it's slightly more complicated than that otherwise we wouldn't need an application to achieve the result, but... I don't know.

metlcat,
I've wiped my phone and installed so many different roms over the past four days that it's almost weird running apps without having to reinstall them first. It's too bad I didn't find xtrSense before I flashed PlainJane again because I probably would have given it a go... is it really that much better that I should subject myself to wiping one more time?

 

[doogald]

While xtrSENSE and its cache2cache feature is great, in this case, it probably will not help. At its best the Eris has about 150 MB of app storage space. Plants vs. Zombies is an incredible 73.9 MB!

Even if you are using apps2sd, the app installer will still look at the amount of space that you have in /data to install the app, and will likely not fine 74 MB free. The apps2sd script does a little bit of folder linking magic to move and run apps from the ext3 partition on your SD card, but it will not give its space available when queried about how much space is left in the /data partition.

If you look at the Plants vs. Zombies page on Amazon.com's Android app store, it says:

Plants vs. Zombies will not run on the following devices:
--Motorola DROID (works fine on Motorola DROID 2 and some DROID X's), Devour, Flipside
--Samsung Transform, Intercept
--HTC Aria, MyTouch 3G
--Sony Ericsson X8
--Sanyo Zio
--Kyocera Echo
--LG Ally

If it won't run on the Droid or the Ally or the MyTouch 3G, I can't believe that there is any way that it will run on the Eris.

Just about the only thing that you could try is to wipe and reinstall from scratch, install nothing but the Amazon app store, and then see if it sees enough room to install the app. Then you will be able to reinstall the rest of your apps.

Link to plants vs. zombies: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0052UZIFA?ie=UTF8&ref=mas_faad

 

[_mw_]

I supppppose I should have read through that before I posted. Nevertheless I learned a few things and wound up finally installing SDK/adb so not a complete loss.

I'm definitely not desperate enough for PvsZ to go through that. If I wipe it's going to be for the benefit of improving my Eris, not putting a game on it haha... oddly enough ever since I ran adb shell it's been acting weird and lagging like crazy. Not placing blame anywhere, just saying that's when it started. Astro force closed and then setCPU threw a hissy fit.

I'll look a little more into xtr anyways and write down a list of apps I have installed. I'm sure I can spare an hour tonight or tomorrow to set it all up yet again.

 

[doogald]

I'll look a little more into xtr anyways and write down a list of apps I have installed. I'm sure I can spare an hour tonight or tomorrow to set it all up yet again.

Three things that you can do instead:

1. Get the free app AppBak. It will create a text backup of all of the apps on your phone, and then you can use that to reinstall your apps back onto xtrSENSE.

https://market.android.com/details?id=org.moparisthebest.appbak&feature=search_result

2. Buy a copy of Titanium Backup. Use menu->batch->backup all user apps. Set up xtrSENSE, install Titanium Backup from the market, menu->batch->restore missing apps with data


https://market.android.com/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackup and https://market.android.com/details?id=com.keramidas.TitaniumBackupPro


3. After doing a Nandroid backup of what you have now, try installing xtrSENSE over what you have now without doing a Data wipe/factory reset. Do a wipe Dalvik cache for sure, though.

If you do try number three, I would still do one of the first two.

 

[_mw_]

Alrighty. All this flashing gives me a warm fuzzy masochistic feeling inside, but I think I'm going to give the xtrSENSE rom a try anyways. Any opinions on the battery tweak vs setCPU? I'm a bit of a control freak so I'm pretty sure I already know what I'll be doing, but I'm just curious to hear back from some people already using the rom.

PS: I don't normally thank everybody in a thread just for participating, but given that this is my first thread here and you guys have been great it's definitely earned.

 

[metlcat]

Alrighty. All this flashing gives me a warm fuzzy masochistic feeling inside, but I think I'm going to give the xtrSENSE rom a try anyways. Any opinions on the battery tweak vs setCPU? I'm a bit of a control freak so I'm pretty sure I already know what I'll be doing, but I'm just curious to hear back from some people already using the rom.

PS: I don't normally thank everybody in a thread just for participating, but given that this is my first thread here and you guys have been great it's definitely earned.

Having titanium backup will make the transition to a new ROM much easier. If you are rooted, it really is an essential app. I have a lot of fun flashing new ROMs. At one point I was trying a new one every 2-3 days. It is a weird kind of fun though (as you seem to be finding out).

I've never run xtrSense, nor the battery tweak, but setCPU is a great app. I liked being able to set different profiles to make my phone as fast as possible when needed, as slow as possible when not needed, and to extend the battery. If you're a control freak, you could always try both of them and see which you like more.

 

[doogald]

Alrighty. All this flashing gives me a warm fuzzy masochistic feeling inside, but I think I'm going to give the xtrSENSE rom a try anyways. Any opinions on the battery tweak vs setCPU? I'm a bit of a control freak so I'm pretty sure I already know what I'll be doing, but I'm just curious to hear back from some people already using the rom.

I have tried using both, and I am currently using SetCPU. To be honest, I don't think that there is much of a difference between the performance and battery life between the two, but SetCPU makes it easier to change things if I wish.

One other thing to note about xtrSENSE is that it runs a script on startup to briefly put the phone in Airplane mode - for about 15 seconds or so - to cure something called the time without signal bug. I only note it because I received a phone call just after my phone booted up last Saturday and it was dropped as the phone went into airplane mode, which I had forgot would happen and led to some brief confusion.