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Showing posts from September, 2011

Gingerbread 2.3.6 on Nexus One and Link2SD

Just got an OTA update on my Nexus One for Gingerbread 2.3.6. Reboot to install. Oops, what's that? Lost my root. No problem. Reboot into recovery and reinstalled su.zip. Oops, what's that again? Link2SD gave a mount warning and requested a quick reboot. After the quick reboot, the warning was gone and all linked apps were working well, but I don't relish having to reboot twice every time from now on! After some mucking around, here's how to fix it. I had to uninstall Link2SD, reinstall it, run and select the filesystem type of the second partition, then reboot. This reinstalls the mount script correctly in the new ROM and everything works fine after that.

Freeing up phone storage with Link2SD

Another more powerful way of freeing up phone storage is with Link2SD . Using this method requires you to have a rooted phone. If you don't, either root your phone or there isn't really much else you can do. The idea behind Link2SD is simple. Remember Android is basically a modified version of Linux and the application files resides in /data (where '/' , or the root directory, is your phone storage). When more and more files are created in /data , your phone storage is slowly eaten up and very soon you will see the "Phone storage low" warning. Link2SD lets you move some of the files in /data to the SD storage but retain a pointer or symbolic link in /data . This is a legitimate filesystem sleight-of-hand that retains the directory structure that Android expects, but with the bulk of the data moved to the SD card. For example, after moving Angry Bird using Link2SD, the affected files are: /data/app/com.rovio.angrybirds-1.apk -> /data/sdext2/com.ro