yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Let's continue experimenting with zRam

First, I don't want to discourage you from implementing and merging zRam into a nightly. It's sorely needed on the HD+, and frankly, I'm willing to live with the SOD's I get using zRAM, since my HD+ is so much "faster" with zRam than without it. (Faster in the sense that apps don't have to continually restart when switching apps. Raw performance seems the same - AnTuTu benchmark is about the same as before.)

Second, in your OP, you said "I have also included some unmerged changes." So zRam wasn't the only variable that changed in your build. While I didn't have an SOD a day with previous nightlies, it could be that some other commit in the build is causing my SOD's.

Third, it could be that my HD+ is an outlier. My HD+ is hardly stock, in the sense that I use apps like Greenify to hibernate apps in the background. And I use DisableServices in a "hacker" sort of way, and a ton of services in Google Play Services are disabled. ("Hacker" in the sense that I don't know what a lot of the Services do, but I figure I don't need services like "Wear" and "Cast" running in the background. A lot of "trial and error.") Perhaps Greenify is crashing the system when it tries to hibernate an app which is being swapped out to RAM? And you know how apps are always trying to launch themselves, uncommanded, in the background. Perhaps one of them is the culprit. (Not sure if that would show up on logcat if the crash occurs before the write can complete.)

Fourth, and related to third, it could be that zRam uncovered a problem with CM11 itself or ART's memory management. It could be that we're taxing the system more than it usually has been, and so Android itself is crashing under the higher load.

Fifth, no one else here in the forum has reported SOD's. And since you're not having problems, and since nothing jumped out at you from my logcats, it's probably me. In fact, I ran last night for about 4 hours straight, surfing the web and watching youtubes without incident. Except for one SOD, my SOD's seem to happen when I'm using the tablet, and more specifically, when I'm switching apps. (So I was mostly just running Dolphin and Flash.)

Sixth, the purpose of a nightly is to try new things. I'd hate to see you abandon zRam simply because I am getting SOD's on my non-stock setup. If someone blesses your code, let's merge zRam in the build and let a wider audience test it. If no one reports a bug, then the problem is with me. If there's a small bug somewhere in your implementation, I'm sure the experts out there can fix it.

Thanks for the explanation as to why zRam can't be enabled/disabled from Settings. (Swapon/swapoff wouldn't work?)

To sum up: Let's go for it!
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] KostasR:
So with [MENTION=4190710]drmarble[/MENTION] 's build we have ZRAM enabled by default which eliminates the redraws of apps and multitasking is actually useful?

I hate it when I open an article in chrome from within feedly, and when I return back feedly reloads. If the above statement is correct I 'm guessing I should download the build from post #2023 ?
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] TBueno:
App reloading

Man I can understand your pain completely. I use feedly a lot too, and that's definitely a bummer. Which is intriguing considering this device has a relatively low "baseline" RAM usage.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] jpisini:
Make a backup that Rom did not work for me it just crashed on boot.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] KostasR:
I will do a full wipe. I will post results here :)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] ajislav:
In my case, I had no problems upgrading from M10..
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] cwmoser:
I note that a M11 nightly is posted this morning.

Does the M11 contain everything in prior nightlies?

If I have been flashing the nightlies, can I just flash over my prior nightly without a reset/full wipe?
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] leapinlar:
No and no. There is a cutoff date for inclusion of nightly changes in the M series. If you flash M11 over the latest nightly without a wipe there are likely to be problems.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
I figured too many things would change at the system level on this zRam test build, so I did a full wipe (Factory Reset and /system) before installing. Worked for me.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] digixmax:
M11 branched on 09/30 (http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/cyanogenmod-11-0-m11), if you are running a nightly released after that branch date you'd likely need to do a clean install of M11. See http://www.cyanogenmod.org/blog/cm-11-m4-post-release-items for explanation.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
I understand. But since we're testing zRam, would there be any benefit to you if you gave us a zRam build based on M 11? It would give us all a more stable baseline OS. (i.e., fewer varables in the experiment.)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] rhyang:
I think if it's just a question of occasional SOD's, we've had those for months now, without zram. I even saw one with the latest unofficial slimkat. I bet they are due to something else.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Perhaps. I don't keep a log on paper, but I've been getting at least one SOD a day with the test zRam build. Whereas before, I only had the occassional freeze, as you noted. But perhaps that's due to so many more apps "running" now, taxiing the ability of Android.

That's why I was thinking a zRam build from M 11 might help give us more insight.

I've thought about flashing the latest nightly to see if my frequency of SOD's goes back to "occassional." But I'm spoiled by this iteration of zRam!
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] drmarble:
I made a very plain, vanilla zram build. No other changes are included that aren't merged except one that is needed to nightlies to build again. I expect that patch ( http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/c/74851/ ) (it has to do with FLAC audio) to be merged soon so nightlies to resume.

The sqlite changes have also been merged into mainstream so I didn't have to include them.

I cannot make an M11 build. There is no easy mark to define it. It is possible to reproduce a milestone build but it is a pain. They are really just defined as a certain day's build.

Here are the important details

Download here: https://app.box.com/s/7drk5bgfn0sbslnoxaaz

md5sum: df01251818972864611d0eec99e03111 cm-11-20141010-EXPERIMENTAL-DrM-zram-ovation.zip

Again, let me know if this works. Thanks for testing. Lets keep these old tablets fun and useful.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Downloading it now. I'll try a dirty flash first, to save myself some time. I'll report back in a couple days to let you how my SOD's are doing.

While my HD+ is fun, it IS useful. Until the Nexus 9 comes out (and the price down), the HD+ is the best hardware for aviation moving maps. (Because of its gorgeous 3:2 display. Sunlight readable in the cockpit too.) So I really appreciate your effort in expanding the usefulness of this tablet.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] ShapeShifter499:
I'm experiencing a strange bug when I update using the built in CM Updater in settings on my Nook HD Hummingbird. Can someone please tell me why this happens? I do have the latest CWM as found in the OP on this thread. Please see video link below.

http://mediacrush.net/uzvg49wrolk0
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] king200:
I dirty flashed over a clean M11 build. Clean in that I didn't take any nightlies M10-M11. I am running ART

HD+ x 16 gb is running ok with no FC or SOD. I didn't have either of those problems before this flash.

I don't see any obvious differences but I need some guidance as exactly what to look for.

The font size and display icons to seem larger. I was an 110% and reduced back to 100%. Using Nova Prime launcher but comparing to an install on HD+ x32 gb.

Thanks for keeping up with the HD+. It's an incredible value and meets all my needs, i.e. reading (Moon+), browsing (Firefox) YouTube, Netflix, Music (PowerAmp), Hangouts. I don't plan any action games or use Xposed. I've learned that automatic brightness control, no GPS, and no IR blaster are not important for me. HD SCREEN, MicroSD card and Android 4.4 are great.

I've been doing this rom from the first EMMC install.

.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Leave your reader, youtube and firefox running and see if switching between them is faster. (That is, no resarts of an app.)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] king200:
I had to use Pac Rom for comparison. kernel 3.0.031-green+, ipzard@izard-ideapad-750 #1

Yes, switching between those 3, Youtube, Firefox and Moon Reader is faster, defined by restart vs just switch. I substituted Netflix for Youtube with same result. While watching video, the apps don't stream in the background. Adding Poweramp, which plays in background, seemed to overload.

Not very objective test and I'd like to see others confirm.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] ejstubbs:
Well, I've been through the process in digixmax' posting and CM11 started up OK and began restoring my apps. However, I have a couple of problems with the UI:

I've only got one homescreen page. I went to where the homescreen settings used to be on CM10, but there was nothing useful there. I then found the settings reached by pressing and holding on the homescreen background, but again, nothing about the number of homescreen pages. Anyone know how I get back to the seven homescreen pages I used to have?

The digital clock widget seems to occupy an unreasonable amount of homescreen real estate. I've tried resizing it but the smallest it seems to want to go is about half the screen height - most of which it doesn't even use. Now, I know I could try different clock widgets from the play store but honestly, why should that be necessary when it worked fine in CM10? How or why did it get broken on CM11?

First impressions for me are that this feels a bit like a new version of Windows, where the UI has changed for no readily apparent reason when it seemed to work perfectly well before. It's difficult to get a feel for whether or not CM11 is a real improvement when you feel as if you're fighting the UI all the time...

(As an aside: does anyone know where I can find the nice calming green leaf wallpaper that CM10 had? It's disappeared from CM11 and I'd quite like it back. I assume it should be somewhere in the backup I took of CM10 before I made the move to CM11, but where?)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] digixmax:
It should be settable via your launcher Settings->Desktop (accessible from the App Drawer screen's Settings pull-down menu (top-right 3-dot icon).

Did you try replacing it with the digital clock from the Widget collection?

You can find the CM10.x's wallpaper images inside the CMWallpapers.apk file in the \system\app folder of the CM10.x ROM zip file (open and browse the .apk file with any Zip archive file manager program).
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] TBueno:
Additional home screens will be created as you add new shortcuts and widgets. Just "force" them to the edge of the existing one and another home screen will come up. You can add as many as you like, AFAIK.

Smallest digital clock widget I could get here is 3x2. Are you sure you could make it smaller in CM10? Try different grid sizes in Trebuchet settings, it might be that you were used to a more condensed grid.

That particular wallpaper seems to be gone, unfortunately. You can download it from the web (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2109109) and add it manually. But I'd give "Blades of Glory by Henry Mason" from CM11 a try. It's probably as calming as that one.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Good news from my end - no SOD's so far since updating to your very plain vanilla zRam build!

---------- Post added at 03:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:28 AM ----------

I didn't know one could watch video and have apps stream in the background. (Competition for the sound "chip"?) But apparently you could do it before the zRam build.

Anyway, I use an app called Audiopo to listen to podcasted mp3 files. Admittedly, not the same as streaming from the web, but I can listen to podcasts in the background while surfing the web on drmarble's latest test build.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] king200:
I couldn't stream video before either. No reason I'd want to.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Okay. I misunderstood your sentence in post #2064, where you said, "While watching video, the apps don't stream in the background. Adding Poweramp, which plays in background, seemed to overload."

If the (video) apps didn't stream in the background, I thought you meant that you had moved a video to the background and then started listening to music with Poweramp.

Are you saying that video apps don't stream with this build of zRam?

Hmmm . . . I just tried watching some cat videos on youtube using Dophin, and while I get the audio, I only get a black screen now. (Then I tried a Flash test from the web. That works. And I watched two cat videos on dailymotion.com. where I had to "Tap to activate Flash." (Am using the CM 11 hacked flash apk.) But youtube is still not working via Dolphin, even after a reboot. Don't know if the problem is with youtube or the latest zram build.)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] king200:
I tried Youtube via web and the Youtube app. I did the Speedtest.net and speakeasy.net sites and all was it was fine. Youtube via web, when enlarged to full screen, was black with volume but then came in. I'm using Firefox.

Dailymotion.com came up with and without Zram, sort of.. Came up, then full screen, then blacked out. With Zram, Firefox crashed. I'd call this an unreliable tests for me.

Let me know what else to try.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] ejstubbs:
Thanks both for your help. It's more or less how I want it now, but there's still a few niggles.

Hmm, nope. There's only a very limited set of options available there. I can't even get the line that, in CM10, I used to have separating the scrolling part of the homescreen from the dock :(

That was the one that was giving me problems. I've now got the cLock widget sized the way I want, though accessing its settings seems cumbersome: AFAICS you have to add a new instance of it to the homescreen, then it comes up with the settings page so you can configure the weather, calendar events etc. Changes you make there are then also reflected in the original instance of the widget. There doesn't seem to be a way to access the cLock widget's settings directly.

Thanks for that pointer. CMWallpapers.apk didn't have the one I wanted but the Trebuchet.apk did. Happy now!

Ah, OK. That didn't seem to be working when I first tried it, but it is now. OTOH it seems that you can only add screens to the right - and you can't specify a default home screen like you could with CM10. I used to have my default screen as number three out of five, with all my most-used apps on it. To the left were two pages of techy apps and to the right were two pages of more "fluffy" ones - travel apps, games etc. That way, from the default screen I needed to swipe no more than twice to get the screen I wanted. Now it seems that I always end up at screen 1 eg if I press the Home button or wake up the tablet, the screen I want can be up to four swipes away :(

BTW, does CM11 come as standard with the restricted access to the external SD card turned

off

ie the way it used to be pre-KitKat?
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] TBueno:
You can still pick a default home screen. Enter Trebuchet settings (long press in empty area) and an overview of your current home screens will come up. Swipe around them until you see the one you want to fall back to then tap the little house icon on the top grey bar.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] rhyang:
Yes.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] ejstubbs:
Wifi issues

I thought I'd got my HD+ fairly well set up, with help from rhyang, TBueno, Digimax and leapinlar. My homescreen issues were more or less solved and I was happily tableting away last night. But since this morning, wifi has locked up shortly after connecting - usually within a minute of getting an IP address. This has been the case on my home wifi, and on public hotspots. All my other wifi devices are working fine.

Since the tablet is pretty useless without wifi, I'm going to have to revert back to CM10.2 in an attempt to fix it :(

Is anyone aware of any known issues with wifi on M11?
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] TBueno:
I get wifi drops once in a while. CM 10.2.1 and CM 11 M11. I've set an airplane mode quick setting tile, I toggle it and it's back in about 5 seconds.

From what I read in forums, including this one, I get the impression that our Nook is a bit less predictable than other gadgets. Different users get very different issues. And we're talking about a tablet with no mobile radios or cameras.

CM 10.2.1 was the first setting to make it really useful to me. But still, it's not as close as stable as any other device I've seen running CM. At least my unit.

I started getting random reboots a bit more often than usual and decided to take the leap to CM11-M11 about a week ago, reinstalling everything from scratch. It's all very nice, but too heavy webpages and especially feedly still prompt sudden reboots. I'm a light user, single home screen, lots of free memory etc. But at least the pesky CM 10 "Equalizer has stopped" is gone.

I've switched back to 10.2.1 before, I like the old Trebuchet, but I'll just settle this time. I guess it's not so much about this or that version, I suspect it's pointless to OCD too much on this thing. Way I see it, it's come a long way from the almost unusable, extremely reboot-trigger-happy bargain tablet running a heavily skinned ICS.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] Classpro:
I'd like to try this rom but box says you lack bandwidth and won't let me download it. is it available anywhere else?
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] ejstubbs:
In my case the wifi drops were not 'once in a while': it would only work for about 60s or less before freezing. Sure, toggling airplane mode or toggling wifi would get it working, but only for a minute or so before all network connectivity froze again. It makes the tablet pretty much unusable IMO.

However - unfortunately - it seems that there is something more fundamental gone awry with my tablet. I have restored by last CM10.2 backup, and it's still doing it. So it looks like it's not CM11 after all. Which in one way is nice, but in another, not so nice.

I believe mine is still in warranty, so if the worst comes to the worst I can wipe it back to stock and get it repaired, replaced or (more likely I think since it was a refurb) get a refund and have to find something else - which would be a shame because I really like the HD+, especially the screen size.

Update:

Hmm...just been sat here in the office where there are lots of secured wifi networks to which I don't have access. On the settings page, wifi wouldn't reliably show any SSIDs. Tried Wifi Analyzer: same thing until I toggled airplane mode and the screen filled with SSIDs. Then after a minute or so, they all disappeared again. Tried connecting through my phone via a wifi hotspot and everything was fine: browsed lots of web sites, watched a couple of YouTube vids, no problems - although the Wifi Analyzer screen did go blank again for a while, but connectivity was still good.

Puzzled now!

(On the plus side, I now know that my new cellular provider allows wifi tethering, which my previous one didn't. I could, and did, use bluetooth tethering with the old provider. I assume they couldn't block that because it's invisible to the cellular network. I'll probably stick to bluetooth tethering anyway, at least for the Nook, since it's less power-hungry than wifi tethering. But it's nice to know that it's there if I need it.)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] sd_shadow:
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[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
I had a similar problem after flashing a nightly. It turned out to be that the file p2p_supplicant.conf (in /data/misc/wifi) got hosed somehow. (I thought the file controlling Wi-Fi used to be wifi_supplicant.conf? Did it change during a nightly?)

Specifically, there is a text field "priority" at the end of each network listing in the file. In my case, two of the same networks somehow had the same priority assigned to them.

So I edited the file to change one of the colliding priorities to a different number. Solved my problem.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] Classpro:
I was able to download the zip file for the zram rom today, but it would not install. It said the zip file was bad. I tried downloading three times, no luck. Any ideas?
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] ejstubbs:
Hmm. I've got p2p_supplicant.conf in /data/misc/wifi. I've also go a wpa_suplicant.conf in there, as well as one in /system/etc/wifi, and a wpa_supplicant in /system/bin.

As it happens, my tablet's wifi now seems to working OK. Since I reported the lack of issues using my phone's hotspot, the tablet's wifi has also worked fine on my wifi at home. That's with the tablet back on CM11, following a factory reset prior to recovering the backup of the M11 install that previously gave problems.

If the problem starts happening again I'll definitely check out the p2p_supplicant.conf entries.

The stock CM11 browser seems to be awfully slow starting up from 'cold' (ie all tabs closed last time) at the moment, though.

Is there anything in particular that I need to do before switching to the ART runtime? I presume that if any of my apps aren't compatible, they'll just refuse to run, or FC or something.
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
On your previous wi-fi problem, I'm guessing that the factory reset cleared any conflicts with priorities in p2p_supplicant.conf.

On switching to ART - I just clicked it and waited. There was an app, HEX Editor, that didn't seem compatible with ART for a while - it ran but froze when trying to open files.

On a browser - I use Lucid, a very light weight browser, for browsing when I don't need Flash. (Which is 99% of the time.)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] TBueno:
Since ART is being mentioned often in last posts, would anyone care sharing some practical results?

I've tested it in a few devices already, and I'm an enthusiast for the latest and greatest, but I can honestly say I haven't noticed any difference in day-to-day usage...

Under ART apps are said to load faster, but I couldn't find one that really showed a noticeable improvement. Does it become usable sooner, in your experience? Is there any app you'd point out to perform significantly better?
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
The only reason I'm running ART is because I read it's the future. Even tho CM still warns in 4.4.4 that ART is experimental, I expext there won't be a Dalvik option in Lollipop. I might as well know now what works and what doesn't for when CM12 comes along. Otherwise, you're correct. There doesn't seem to be a B & W difference. (Succulent did a test of the two. Pretty much a tie.)
[Nook HD, HD+ Android Development] PMikeP:
Good news. The video problem above isn't a zRam build problem. Dolphin just got an update and that cured the youtube video.