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Root CyanogenMod 7 Unofficial Beta 5 02/20/12

Sup peeps / fellow Prevailers? I'm atempting to maybe add a little proformance/ RAM to our cm7. I noticed wetbiker mentioned a few post back that he had some good results using the apps2sd method because data on ext4 was getting lag. I have exp. that as well. I also would like to mention that I dislike apps2sd (in no offence to you biker. I respect whatever you post because you know what you are talking about and are usually right)
I've noticed that Koumajitsu has perfected the data on ext4 by creating a swapfile but not the typical way of making a partition on your sdcard for swap but a faster way.

for those of you who don't know, let me explain..

swap on your sd is slow because of the transfer rate between /system and card. swap is much faster on the internal memory. So, when using the /data on ext4 method, what he did was since /data now exist on a partition on your sd, the /data partition on your internal memory is empty. Kouma made a swapfile the entire size of the empty data partition on the phone so that swap is the fastest it can be.

I got to wondering if I could impliment this on cyanogen being that i use cm7 as my only daily driver. ( have been for a long time now) and wondered what the results would be compared to cm7's method for swap called compache..
What compache does is take a part of your RAM (18% by default) and makes that a swap space because RAM is the fastest possible storage space that exist. imo, even though this works very well, it might not be the best solution for a low-end phone like ours because 18% of 256mb of ram is not leaving much for actual RAM. If you have a Gig or more of RAM, that would be a near perfect solution but we dont have those privledges.

Ok so I picked kouma's brain on how he did it with the koumamod.apk and he explained to me that he just created a file named swap in /system. I did it with root explorer...

also, I've found that disabling compache completely was not optimum but reducing it to 10% was the sweet spot for me.

then he mounted it to /dev/block/stl13 in an su shell like this
Code: 
mount /dev/block/stl13 /system/swap

next, he created a swapfile inside that swap folder
Code: 
dd if=/dev/zero of=/system/swap/swapfile
Code: 
mkswap /system/swap/swapfile

and let adb extend the file until it ran out of space on stl13. when it runs out of space you will get an error: No space left on device
318817+0 records in
318816+0 records out
and bytes transfered ##.## seconds
this is what you want. it just means it took up the whole partition.

after the swapfile is made, set the permissions:
Code: 
chown root:root /system/swap/swapfile
Code: 
chmod 0600 /system/swap/swapfile

now turn swap on:
Code: 
swapon /system/swap/swapfile
if you do have a swap partition on your sd you can enable that too:
Code: 
swapon /dev/block/mmcblk0p3

I havent found a way to set priority to the partitions yet in cm7 because the typical way of using the -p option doesn't work with cm7's busybox. I'm sure there is a way, just havent found it yet. default priority is 60 (i think) and the first "swapon" has more priority than second "swapon" by default in linux

and set swappiness to 60: (or whatever works for you)
Code: 
echo "vm=swappiness=60" > /system/etc/sysctl.conf

Doing this made a huge difference in multitasking and speed for me but it's not perfect yet because the swapfile in /system/swap/ disappears after reboot.
Maybe some of you can test this and come up with a way to make it perm or come up with and init.d script that does this every boot. We need to figure how to set priorities for each swaps and how to make it stick after reboot.

if we do, Kouma "may" even be inclined to create a koumamod.apk for cm7. ;) :D

This is my setup:
latest cm7 with Kato's data on ext ockernel
16GB class 10 sdcard
partitioned 1GB swap/ 2GB data /rest is fat32
OCed 946MHz

EDIT: don't create swapfile on internal /data. cm7 doesnt like it at all..
 
Never tried app2sd I used s2e. The newest version works flawlessly. I just set up my ext, downloaded the app and opened it up then went in to settings and selected all boxes. I then backed up and selected everything but data. Worked like a charm and a lot better than the older version did. Glad you're still working on bettering the rom. I put it on my prevail for the guy I sold it to today. He loves it. :D
 
wetbiker7 said:
Never tried app2sd I used s2e. The newest version works flawlessly. I just set up my ext, downloaded the app and opened it up then went in to settings and selected all boxes. I then backed up and selected everything but data. Worked like a charm and a lot better than the older version did. Glad you're still working on bettering the rom. I put it on my prevail for the guy I sold it to today. He loves it. :D
Click to expand...
Sorry to see you go biker.. I know you'll still be around but not being a prevail owner will make you eventually move on. I have a Transform Ultra and have been doing some deving over there for a while now but I just cant seem to deactivate the prevail cuz I just cant believe what this little phone can do now. I just use the TU for a dev phone. I guess i'll switch eventually when we have a full working cm7 maybe.
 
inigomontoyasr said:
why don't you make the swap with an init.d script?

edit: nevermind, i read the WHOLE post and saw that you mentioned it already.
Click to expand...

I'm really not that good at making scripts..lol

My best goes out to you and your family inigo, I've been there myself. I'm from new orleans. Hope you guys recover fast.
 
wetbiker7 said:
Never tried app2sd I used s2e. The newest version works flawlessly. I just set up my ext, downloaded the app and opened it up then went in to settings and selected all boxes. I then backed up and selected everything but data. Worked like a charm and a lot better than the older version did. Glad you're still working on bettering the rom. I put it on my prevail for the guy I sold it to today. He loves it. :D
Click to expand...

I too have noticed that S2E seems to run much better now. It ran fine before, but it has been improved over the last few months.
 
Hmmmm I had to stop using s 2 e Because every time I set it up and rebooted my phone I would lose everything. I would lose all my user apps and settings????
 
I have found a small problem when it comes to downloading apps from Google play. In settings-about phone the model number of my phone is listed as SPH-M820, it used to be SPH-M820-BST before switching to cm7...I can't dl some apps because of the change of the model number, many that say compatible for SPH-M820-BST are listed as incompatible for SPH-M820.

Does anyone know a way to fix this?

Thanks
 
techmeister said:
I have found a small problem when it comes to downloading apps from Google play. In settings-about phone the model number of my phone is listed as SPH-M820, it used to be SPH-M820-BST before switching to cm7...I can't dl some apps because of the change of the model number, many that say compatible for SPH-M820-BST are listed as incompatible for SPH-M820.

Does anyone know a way to fix this?

Thanks
Click to expand...

That's because the apps are not compatible w/ CM7. You will have a lot of apps that will only work with CM7 too.

Just because G Play says that the apps are incompatible doesn't mean that they actually are. Try finding the apps from another source and see if they will work. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won't.

Be very careful too. Make sure you do a CWM backup before trying an app that G Play labels incompatible . It may very well be incompatible with your ROM and lock the phone up. :eek::cool:
 
wetbiker7 said:
That's because the apps are not compatible w/ CM7. You will have a lot of apps that will only work with CM7 too.

Just because G Play says that the apps are incompatible doesn't mean that they actually are. Try finding the apps from another source and see if they will work. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won't.

Be very careful too. Make sure you do a CWM backup before trying an app that G Play labels incompatible . It may very well be incompatible with your ROM and lock the phone up. :eek::cool:
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I thought it was just an issue with the model# being changed.
 
I have been experiencing a strange problem. My signal strength indicator keeps freezing both the indicator in the status bar and the text dbm in settings-about phone-status.

I have tried uninstalling cm7, factory reset, clear dalvik cash, clear system cash, went back to stock reinstalled cm7 with no apps no themes and still have the same problem...tried it on FA19, FE16, CTmod and had no problems, but every time I go back to cm7 I have the same problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks
 
techmeister said:
I have been experiencing a strange problem. My signal strength indicator keeps freezing both the indicator in the status bar and the text dbm in settings-about phone-status.

I have tried uninstalling cm7, factory reset, clear dalvik cash, clear system cash, went back to stock reinstalled cm7 with no apps no themes and still have the same problem...tried it on FA19, FE16, CTmod and had no problems, but every time I go back to cm7 I have the same problem.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Click to expand...

using any themes?
 
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