[G1 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Ano59:
Some news, problems and ideas

Well, I uploaded it, download it if you'd like to see how it looks like. ;)

System backup (archive).

System backup (yaffs image).

(this is not exactly a factory image, because I edited a few things in /system like wpa_supplicant.conf or asound.conf. I've deleted anything sensitive (like my wifi passwords) though)

Btw I went further in looking how the beta I installed works. You say it should be called alpha, but it's quite stable, I had some problems at first (often related to permissions) but once fixed, I'm getting no problem at all !

Lacking some space, I even tried to edit app2sd.sh to symlink dalvik-cache in /system/sd, even if it wasn't aways recommended by answers in Google ; it's still working well, and I got like 34 MB of free space on /data atm. :)

# busybox df -h
busybox df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 59.4M 0 59.4M 0% /dev
tmpfs 59.4M 0 59.4M 0% /cache
tmpfs 4.0M 0 4.0M 0% /sqlite_stmt_journals
/dev/block/mtdblock3 70.0M 63.6M 6.4M 91% /system
/dev/block/mtdblock4 54.0M 19.6M 34.4M 36% /data
/dev/block/vold/179:2
493.8M 40.3M 428.0M 9% /system/sd
/dev/block//vold/179:1
1.2G 1.1G 149.9M 88% /sdcard
# busybox free
busybox free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 121604 115320 6284 0 17740
Swap: 128512 12416 116096
Total: 250116 127736 122380
# ls -l /data | busybox grep "system/sd"
ls -l /data | busybox grep "system/sd"
lrwxrwxrwx root root 2010-04-26 10:43 dalvik-cache -> /system/s
d/dalvik-cache
lrwxrwxrwx root root 2010-04-26 10:43 app -> /system/sd

As you can see, swap is used too. At first it never gets used, and when you Google something about Android swap, some users say it worths nothing because it's always at zero, but after a few hours of usage, swap gets useful, even if I didn't notice any big change in device speed.

I'm still getting a little problem though, the same problem I had with my former system. I can get root access for myself, and I can get genuine root access through adb, but I can't manage to provide root to apps.

I've put "tayst", a file, in /data. It belongs to root user.

Let's try through adb...

# id
id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root)
# busybox chmod 4777 /data/tayst
busybox chmod 4777 /data/tayst

(I'm too lazy to show ls data, but it actually works, permissions are changed)

Now through the terminal on the phone...

# id
id
uid=10061(app_61) gid=10061(app_61) groups=3001(net_bt_admin),3002(net_bt),3003(inet)
# busybox chmod 4777 /data/tayst
chmod: /data/tayst: Operation not permitted

(it does not work of course, even if

direct

chmod (without calling busybox)

does

work)

"busybox id" returns the same thing than "id" in both cases. I've tried some root-only apps (like PicMe, ShootMe or Drocap to take a screenshot, or SU permissions management...) and they never work. Even if I got root myself.

This may be related to root problems ; when I look at the log after the app problem, I always see a few lines dealing with permissions problems (which shouldn't happen as root).

This may be related to armv4 CPU too, of course ; apps that need root would then simply crash like some other "normal" apps. I've thought to that because "TAutility", an app which seems to require root, works well (this app symlinks the cache of a few apps in SD).

# ls -l /system/bin | busybox grep "rws"
ls -l /system/bin | busybox grep "rws"
-rwsrwxrwx root root 86956 2009-12-17 09:46 sh
# ls -l /system/xbin | busybox grep "rws"
ls -l /system/xbin | busybox grep "rws"
-rwsrwxrwx root root 86956 2010-04-24 00:59 su

About this app, I got an idea for the next release if there's one ; why not automating this symlink job when the release gets installed ?

"TAutility" does it too, and I never noticed any problem. The app sends this on /sdcard but it would be possible to send the cache in /system/sd instead.

# ls -l /data/data/com.android.browser
ls -l /data/data/com.android.browser
lrwxrwxrwx root app_36 2010-04-24 01:01 cache -> /sdcard/cache/Br
owser
drwxrwx--x app_6 app_6 2010-04-24 01:08 app_icons
drwxrwx--x app_6 app_6 2010-04-24 01:08 app_thumbnails
drwx------ app_6 app_6 2010-04-24 22:22 app_plugins
drwxrwx--x app_6 app_6 2010-04-24 01:08 shared_prefs
drwx------ app_6 app_6 2010-04-24 01:09 gears
drwxrwx--x app_6 app_6 2010-04-24 01:08 databases
drwxr-xr-x system system 2010-04-24 00:30 lib

By doing this, more space would be freed.