24 replies to this topic

[levz0r]

Hey guys!
I really appreciate your work on the CM!!! I am using it since Nightly 20 or so and it is getting better and better.
Everything works perfect for me (at least the things I really need) except one thing: One day I wanted to download a game from the Market and got the "Insufficient memory space" message... I was really surprised, then I've tried another game and got the same message. After digging in, I've found that the datadata (e.g /data/data) folder/partition is almost full. To verify that, I  executed the df -h command in adb and the result proved the point:

/dev/block/mtdblock6	172.0M	161.3M 	10.7M  94% /datadata

The question is: why there is only 172MB allocated for the applications data, when so much spare space available on the device?

Please consider looking into it.
Keep up the good work!
Lev

[Kaik541]

it's not an issue. 90% of users are fine with 170 MB for /data/data, the reason it has it's own partition is because the team decided to put the application data on the oneNAND chip (as opposed to the moviNAND chip where /data is stored) because it is SIGNIFICANTLY faster. if you are lacking space, move apps to your sdcard, usually a lot of space from /datadata will be freed up as well.

the choice was made to put it on it's own partition because for the majority of users, it leads to a far more favorable user experience and the people negatively affected by this are few and far between (and usually people who have like, 150-200 apps installed and consider all of them "necessary" or are using horribly inefficient applications). basically, think about what you're actually installing and if you're actually going to use it. if you *really* need it and it takes up a ton of space, move it to your sdcard.

if we kept it inside /data (and therefore, on moviNAND), it would lead to a miserable user experience (just like on stock Samsung ROM's, that's how Samsung has it too) for everyone, merely to protect a very few users. basically, it's not worth "protecting" a few rampant users to give everyone a crappy CM experience.

[levz0r]

Thanks for the informative reply.

Of course I've tried to move apps to SD. Unfortunately, some apps keep recreating their stuff in datadata partition even after being moved to the SD. For example, a GPS app called TelMap (which is one of the best imo) takes about 20MB (!!!) of data. iGo takes about the same. And yes, after they were moved to SD.

[iXNyNe]

The way that whole thing is worded kinda makes me sad to use cm and android in general.

Of course I probably don't NEED every app on my phone, and maybe there are a few all in one apps that do the job of two or three apps I have installed, but maybe I like the separate interfaces for organization or maybe I just want a phone loaded with apps so I have things to do when I'm bored. Why should I limit my choices because someone else feels I have too many apps?

I'm in agreement that better performance for the masses should win, so keep datadata where it is, but is there a way to increase that partition? Or is that chip out of space?

[Planet]

It can either be the size it is and fast, or practically boundless and slow. I do prefer the faster version, but I did not like the FCs without knowing what I did wrong. As the devs are working on monitoring the relevant free space and there is a workaround, I am content.

One thing though: this can be triggered with very careful app selection, not only by grabbing tons of freebies you'll never use. Some apps just munch entirely too much space on datadata, expecting it to be bigger.

Edited by Planet, 10 November 2011 - 04:29 PM.

[nevzat]

What about the real speed comparison between a class 10 sd card and that 'SIGNIFICANTLY faster' /datadata partition? I've bought an 16 GB class 10 sd card and want to use it also for /datadata . I've used S2E application, but everytime I use it, my phone fails at the startup. I wish there was an easy, internal setting for us to choose the /datadata location.

[Heritz]

According to Samsung's specifications, these are the max theoretical read speeds of the NANDs:

oneNAND chip: up to 108MB/s
moviNAND chip: up to 52MB/s
Class 10 microSDHC: up to 10MB/s

In other words, a oneNAND chip its almost 10 times faster than a Class 10 SD card. That's why the almighty CM team in all their wisdom decided to use a /datadata partition for better performance.

oneNAND chip brochure: http://www.samsung.c...hure_200609.pdf
moviNAND chip brochure: http://www.samsung.c...oryBrochure.pdf
SD speeds: http://en.wikipedia...._Digital#Speeds

[Bobby98989]

Kaik541, on 19 August 2011 - 02:17 AM, said:

it's not an issue. 90% of users are fine with 170 MB for /data/data, the reason it has it's own partition is because the team decided to put the application data on the oneNAND chip (as opposed to the moviNAND chip where /data is stored) because it is SIGNIFICANTLY faster. if you are lacking space, move apps to your sdcard, usually a lot of space from /datadata will be freed up as well.

the choice was made to put it on it's own partition because for the majority of users, it leads to a far more favorable user experience and the people negatively affected by this are few and far between (and usually people who have like, 150-200 apps installed and consider all of them "necessary" or are using horribly inefficient applications). basically, think about what you're actually installing and if you're actually going to use it. if you *really* need it and it takes up a ton of space, move it to your sdcard.

I get and support the reasoning behind the partition limitation, but man... Your numbers are ridiculous. 150-200 apps? I've got 70, 11 of which are on the SD card and I bump into the limit all the time.  By the most generous math with those numbers, the average app size should be under 1.1 MB.  Are you kidding me? Flash is almost 13 MB. Maps is 11. Market is 6, Gmail and YouTube are 3.  And that's just application size.  It's perfectly common for gmail and the browser to collect tens of megs over 6 months or so. And those are the core apps that basically make android android.  Let's not mention that G+ is quite a big boy at 20 MB. Facebook  and Swype will never make flyweight with 7 and 9.5 MB respectively.  Even my settings app is over your target size.

The 170 size limit is there for a good reason and I'm okay with it, but please don't treat us like we're stupid and that's exactly what those kind of stupid numbers do.

[shm]

/datadata is for apps data, not for the apps itself for example (on my cm9b16) flash 0B of data, swype 1,69MB, skype 4,71MB, angry birds 140KB, gmail 0.8MB, stock email 17MB!!!! move to SD is useless apps data will stay on /datadata

A well written app will use SD for a big amount of data not like the crappy written skype and stock mail app

/data 300MB/1024MB
/datadata 119MB/172MB

look in xda thread it can be disabled putting .nodatadata in /datadata as root.

Edited by shm, 18 February 2012 - 02:21 PM.

[nevzat]

I've tried the .nodatadata solution, unfortunately the phone became laggy as hell.

Like Bobby98989 said,
170 MB is not enough, many popular apps insist storing ".so" library files at /datadata partition, Contacts and Google+ each one is 20+ MB in size (G+ even get bigger in size, exceeding 30-40 MB as time goes by). Move To SD is not available for some apps, and does not have any effect on some apps too (e.g. on G+ it's not effective). Mobile browsers and some other apps insist having their caches on /datadata, so it's unavoidable, it will be short on space.

* The most important issue is not having an option for specifying which application should store its data in /datadata. I wish we have an option in Apps settings, like "store data in /datadata" checkbox. That would solve our problems. For rarely used apps, slower loads are acceptable.
* There should be a settings page, listing the most hungry /datadata consumers. It should list apps by /datadata usage.
* Finally, the error message should be corrected so that users know when /datadata is full, "Insufficient memory space" is misleading and not informative.

Edited by nevzat, 27 February 2012 - 01:33 PM.

[RickyBO89]

nevzat, on 27 February 2012 - 01:28 PM, said:

I've tried the .nodatadata solution, unfortunately the phone became laggy as hell.

Like Bobby98989 said,
170 MB is not enough, many popular apps insist storing ".so" library files at /datadata partition, Contacts and Google+ each one is 20+ MB in size (G+ even get bigger in size, exceeding 30-40 MB as time goes by). Move To SD is not available for some apps, and does not have any effect on some apps too (e.g. on G+ it's not effective). Mobile browsers and some other apps insist having their caches on /datadata, so it's unavoidable, it will be short on space.

* The most important issue is not having an option for specifying which application should store its data in /datadata. I wish we have an option in Apps settings, like "store data in /datadata" checkbox. That would solve our problems. For rarely used apps, slower loads are acceptable.
* There should be a settings page, listing the most hungry /datadata consumers. It should list apps by /datadata usage.
* Finally, the error message should be corrected so that users know when /datadata is full, "Insufficient memory space" is misleading and not informative.

you're absolutely right. it took 1 day for me to understand that my problem was the datadata partition (strange thing, I never had such a problem with cm7 stable and I had more apps installed than now with cm9... so I'd like to understand WHY)

Edited by RickyBO89, 11 April 2012 - 09:44 PM.

[Wendigogo]

You may have a look at this thread for this kind of stuff : Workaround for small /datadata partition

My first modification of OP script may solve your "low memory" issue without laggy phone. It needs a custom kernel (as pre-CM9 doesn't support init.d script) to be used as a recovery flash zip. If you wanna conserve your CM9 "stock" just extract the 30datafix script file from zip and use an app (like scripter from Google play) to execute it (could be run via adb too). This latest option as to be used again if the "low memory" comes back after you install lots of new apps (or you could run it once a week / each time a new app is installed).

And if someone could answers to my second developpement problem ...

[alexmiramas]

Your script is too bad...
If u want a good fix for datadata on cm9
Flash that in recovery...
I have 1.7 gb in datadata now and work fine..
http://code.google.c...&q=#makechanges

Mount datadata in recovery before flash the fixe
Unmount datadata when the fix is flashed..

If u want remove the fix just re-flash

Edited by alexmiramas, 16 April 2012 - 07:00 PM.

[RickyBO89]

alexmiramas, on 16 April 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

Your script is too bad...
If u want a good fix for datadata on cm9
Flash that in recovery...
I have 1.7 gb in datadata now and work fine..
http://code.google.c...&q=#makechanges

Mount datadata in recovery before flash the fixe
Unmount datadata when the fix is flashed..

If u want remove the fix just re-flash

this isn't a fix. do you even know WHY /datadata partition was made?

[alexmiramas]

Yeah note a fix sorry...
But move datadata file in data..

[RickyBO89]

alexmiramas, on 16 April 2012 - 09:18 PM, said:

Yeah note a fix sorry...
But move datadata file in data..

you can obtain the same result by writing a file named .nodatadata inside /datadata

[Wendigogo]

alexmiramas, on 16 April 2012 - 06:57 PM, said:

Your script is too bad...

Your comment is too bad ... Have you just read this script before replying ? Have you just read the thread linked in my post before replying ? It seems you don't.
Please before giving a judgement spend some time reading what your asking about ...

alexmiramas said:

If u want a good fix for datadata on cm9
Flash that in recovery...
I have 1.7 gb in datadata now and work fine..
http://code.google.c...&q=#makechanges

This is not a good fix as the phone becomes laggy whith this; please read above.
And to revert the fix you have to be sure there's enough free space on /datadata. If you don't and fill up this partition your phone will FC all the time.

RickyBO89, on 17 April 2012 - 01:20 AM, said:

you can obtain the same result by writing a file named .nodatadata inside /datadata

You're right @RickyBO89 : in /sbin, you can find a "setupdatadata.sh" script embeding a "migrate_datadata" function (used if /data/data/.nodatadata file exists). This function does the same as the one given by @alexmiramas : moving *all* apps data from /datadata (178Mo yaffs2 partition) to /data (2Go ext4 partition). Drawback is I/O ext4 partition performances are poor compared to yaffs2 partition : phone becomes laggy ... (another drawback, imho : the speedest partition is fully unused : waste of hard/soft).

So some devs are working on this and post on the thread I give before a Workaround for small datadata partition. It uses the previous fix (moving all apps data on /data partition) then moves back frequently used files to /datadata ("databases shared_prefs app_databases"). This way the low latency yaffs2 partition is still (lightly) used and phone becomes smoother. Using this script (and mine describe above), you have to take care when backuping your apps : in Titanium Backup, tick the Preferences > Troubleshooting settings > Follow all symbolic links option.

What I've done in my script is using this modification but move back everything but libs to /datadata. Libs are "static" files only accessed in read only mode and ext4 performances in this way are pretty good. It costs more space on /datadata partition (finally, only lib subdirectories are moved to /data) but the phone becomes as smooth as a "stock" (without "datafix") CM again.

All these explanations, I spend time to write here, are given and detailed on the thread linked in my previous post ...

[alexmiramas]

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE
wendigogol you are member of galaxysteam french forum
i test your script in the past and my phone crash freeze reboot
looooool

[Wendigogo]

alexmiramas, on 17 April 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

I KNOW WHO YOU ARE
wendigogol you are member of galaxysteam french forum
i test your script in the past and my phone crash freeze reboot
looooool

Nice to meet your here too.
Which datafix had freeze your phone ?
The 2903 is rock stable; I used it from ... 29/03 without any problem and lags (lots of other people from galaxysteam and xda forum too). So if this one freeze your phone it may not be related to the script ...
And if you don't want to use mine you can use the one from the post I pointed to ... I don't force anyone to use my modifications and it would be better than the .nodatadata solution. This IS the thread subject.


The next datafix I work on (from time to time) since april is in developpement and not recommended for daily use. That's why it doesn't appear in first page of galaxysteam forum (I maintain). I post it on xda too cause I think people there are ready to test some dev script/kernel/rom and don't care about crashing their phone (I've done it many time in the past).

Finally I ask here, in CM forums, for some help (as you can read on my first post in this thread) cause something happen in CM booting process reverting part of these april datafix. I would pleased to know why/when and how to prevent that ...

Now everything is clear, I hope this thread could continue kindly ...

[ph0b0z]

So.. did i understand it right that the 2gb internal space consists of the fast oneNAND and contains the datadata partition?

Okay.. i do have about 120 apps (including the pre-installed ones) installed.. but i have around 1,5gb free on the 2gb partition, that's a bit annoying since the internal "sd" is full.. and i'd like to move all the apps to the 2gb partition.

i couldn't really find a documentation about the partition setup of the sgs.. so i'd be happy about a link or some more informations about that.

thanks,
ph0

Edited by ph0b0z, 24 April 2012 - 12:24 PM.