The individual blocks on the SD card have a limited life cycle, like 1000000 writes or something like that. Once those writes are exhausted, they can longer be erased and written to. So if you created a swapfile and that swapfile occupies the same physical area on the card all the times, that area will wear out quickly if linux is constantly swapping inactive RAM data from/to that area. I know we use the SD card to save data / apps / etc, but writing is limited on that (unless you're constantly installing software every second of the day); also, the NAND, card driver under WinMo and Linux is smart because they're designed to do wearleveling; that is, spread out the writes evenly all over the area of the Nand/card so that no one area gets exhausted quickly. On a SD card or NAND, I believe each block contains a header section that tells the OS how many writes have been written to it, so this is how it knows what blocks have been written to more or less; I'm not sure but I believe that's how it works. I believe "reading" is unlimited but if you can no longer write to a worn out SD card, it's useless. So that's why using swapping is not recommended. The advanced features of swapper 2 is nice; you can tell it to delete the swapfile and create a new one each time android boots; when creating the new swapfile, it does at a different area of the Sd card so the previous area is not exhausted out. I believe hard drives have a much longer write life cycle. Any expert, please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Edit: oops, everyone beats me to the explanation :oops: And mine is inaccurate about the write cycles, I guess it's in the thousands, not millions, which means you can easily wear out that card using swapping.

Sent from my FRX05-ized TP2

I'm not sure about Sd cards, but I know that on the Nand, the individual unit of storage is a block. Depending the the Nand hardware, a block can be 32kb, 64kb, 128kb, etc. The write cycle is per block. So if you copy a file, let's say 64kb and the block can hold 32kb, the nand driver will use 2 blocks (plus any overhead) to write that file; the driver is smart enough to use wearleveling to spread out the writes over the whole Nand; it may be similarly with a sd card.

Sent from my FRX05-ized TP2

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

thanks guys---a lot of good info.

personal experience. facebook widget (the big one) tends to cause locks/no wakeups on the new kernel

swappy2 - a marked improvement, I have since changed my settings due to the great info from ya'll (plus I was looking at the info page and wasn't caching as much as I thought I would)

dropped my settings to
swap size - 64MB (down from 128)
swappiness - 20 (down from 60)
recreate swap file - checked
reformat swap - unchecked

speed is still amazing!

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

ffkip911, here's a forum on swapper 2 in which some folks used it on the Cyanogen android phones:

Swapper 2 - CyanogenMod Forum. Some good info from users.

If you have a very slow SD card, I don't think using swapper 2 is recommended as it will be very slow. But then again, there are known problems with fast SD cards (class 6 and greater).

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

well, if flash can only be written onto a specific number of times----what happens to internal memory on the phone---every time I get a call, it is logged (stored) onto internal memory. at the end of the day, i erase it, only to get more calls that are logged (stored) at the same location on the memory....to follow the theory to its conclusion, I( should only get X number of days that the phone can work correctly -- ie log sms, mms, email, phone calls. after that, the internal memory would have met it's max number of write's and no longer store/log calls, sms, emails etc....

EDIT: I honestly have no idea how a flash drive actually stores information....playing devils advocate helps me understand. I am not discounting all the great info that has come out about swapping, I think this helps all involved to make the decision on whether to install the program or not.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Memory (RAM) doesn't work the same; it's volatile memory and never needs to retain the data, unlike SD card. Different hardware.

Random-access memory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LOL, I think you're a little obsessed with getting more "virtual" RAM out of your SD card ;). I wouldn't risk my SD card to be obliterated by using a swapfile; that's just a fact. This topic has probably been debated many times.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

thanks---the topic has been discussed to it's conclusion. You guys rock

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I've been using this kernel since Wednesday morning and wanted to add that it's been working really well for me.

I haven't had any "death sleep" issues, and the battery life is outstanding. There was one time where it froze when I pulled down the notification tray, but that's been the only issue so far. It's starting to feel like Android came on this phone from the factory.

Thanks to everyone that puts all the work in to make this possible!

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Update: 3.11.11 kernel on freshly FAT32 formatted sd card, no OC, running well. No SODs, every day or two i get a reboot. Charging is still slow, but not running too hot. About 122F max temp, but I do live in SW FL...ambient is about 76-78F.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Good to hear!

Haven't had much in the way of kernels from WisTilt2, but I have been hashing out the new RIL with him.

Basically work on that is going great - but CDMA is really holding him up. He only has GSM devices, so he's kinda flying blind and depending on my (and rpierce99's) feedback.

So we're gonna keep chugging with that, progress is going well - I won't reveal too much, but there are going to be a lot of fixes when it is ready for general testing ;).

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I am in the same boat. The 3/11/11 overall has been working great! Waking is a charm. I do have a completely random reboot every few days (it happens when I'm not even using the phone). Definitely not a big issue, but still, an issue.

I did have one odd occurrence yesterday. I was on the train and I was trying to check my Google voicemail and my data was having a complete breakdown. Only the E icon popped up with 3G here and there. It looked like there was data activity, but nothing was happening. This went on for about a half hour. Resets did nothing. Later, the thing orange SOD'd me and got super hot.

I seem to only find my problems when I am moving i.e. on the train. Perhaps android doesn't like switching towers too quickly. The thing is though, I am in downtown Chicago where signal is usually never a problem outdoors.

Just my info. Thanks for the work!

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

WisTilt2 said switching towers, as well as switching between E and 3g cause issues.

These issues (and more!) are being ironed out :D.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

FRX05 on Rhod400 (Sprint) with the 3/11 kernel. Not sure if it's related to the issues above.

On Winmo I see that I have EV (3G). I then boot into Android and still see 3G. However when I try to access the forums via Tapatalk, I notice the speed drops to 3 (1X). I reboot back to Winmo and the speed is still 3 (1X). Eventually it switches back to EV (3G) but when I try to access the internet with PIE, it drops the speed to 1X (3). I have to go into settings and Update Profile in order to get EV (3G) back. I hadn't noticed this with any of the previous test kernels.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I certainly don't have these issues - I'm going to assume the service area you're in is poor...?

I'm basically in 3g 100% of the time, but the majority of the places I go are good service areas.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I'll test it in other areas as well to see if the issue repeats. Thank you.

Came home to WinMo again...but these random reboots are rare...every two days or so...

Sent from my Droid-pimped TP2 using Tapatalk

Update: Had an SOD (orange LED)...freshly booted, solid green. Battery life is doing very well on this kernel! I have background data, wifi, & GPS off. 6 hours = 95% battery life.

RANT REMOVED! --Recursion

Update: Had another random reboot to WinMo. I'm going to unplug the Airvana & see...

Mm this quote gives me goosebumps! Lol


Sent from my MSM using Tapatalk

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I've been using this for a few weeks and I think the only real issue that I see is the orange LED death sleeps where I can't get it to wake back up. I have to take out the battery and put it back in to reboot. The unfortunate part is that I don't know when the death is happening so I don't know if I'm missing calls or anything. Works quite well otherwise. Very impressed. Keep up the good work. Looking forward to the next iteration.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Update: Airvana seems to be an issue. I unplugged it, and haven't had a reboot since (1.5 days now). Still testing, but I also run WinMo at times. Notably, WinMo randomly wakes up (screen comes on) in WinMo with the Airvana, so this might be related. Possible data going from Evdo to 1x and back. I've seen it switch between them when on Airvana.

If this is the case, then
(1) damn...I really dig having 1.7/.7 data throughput & solid signal in the house & will miss it; and
(2) damn...latest kernel kix ass!

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

@Recursion: is Airvana like Airave??

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Good things come to those who wait... :D

WisTilt2 has been out of town the last few days, but I did some more testing of his new RIL... and it's going very well. Still not nearly stable enough to release for general testing (sorry!) but I'm hoping soon... still lots of commands to flesh out, and WisTilt2 found that Android wasn't properly initializing the modem - so bugs getting squashed left and right, and I'm hopeful that with it these SoD bugs will go away. The reboots are a little more perplexing, but perhaps another symptom.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

are we talking FRX or GB boss??

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

RIL is build-agnostic my friend!

Edit - To clarify, I have been testing on Froyo, but the RIL should be able to be used on any of our builds.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Excellent to hear about the RIL Arrrghhh. And ffkip, yes, airave/airvana are one in the same, there are older ones typically referrred to as airaves and newer ones sometimes referred to as airvanas. I have both and both have caused me issues and although I still occasionally have some SOD's, I believe they are due in part to the original reason I needed an airave/airvana, crappy signal in areas in my house, so I do drop signals here and there in the house, and that may cause the problems, but they are much less since shutting off my airave/airvana.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Yes & No. It's the same idea, but the latest version that supports EVDO. The company that makes it for Sprint is "Airvana," hence the name.

Well, I'm still holding out. But I'm running outta beer ... :headbang:
Good news, re: the new RIL in the works. Yeah, the reboots are weird, no noticeable pattern yet. It happens to fresh reboots, virgin setups, older setups, at different times. Like I mentioned, the only things that jump out screaming at me are (1) the weird "wake-ups," and (2) the 1x/EVDO Toggling WinMo exhibits when in range of the Airvana. And as I also mentioned, I haven't had a reboot yet with the Airvana unplugged. These tend to support a likely Airvana-sumhowphknitup situation. I'll chime in if & when I get another reboot.

Thanks again for your time on this project, bro. I know it takes a lot of time & effort...so cheers.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Arrrghhh, here's the dmesg and logcat from my freeze earlier today. As you know, it wasn't a SOD because stuff was still going on behind the scenes, more of a failed wake, was originally kinda frozen screen w/ orange led, screen lit up, I hit back on the hard keys and it went to blinking green LED and from the bottom of the logcat file, you can see what I was still receiving texts but couldn't look at them.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Hrm... interesting. I'm certainly no expert, but these logs show some serious issue. I just wish I knew what the issue was :p.

Logcat seems to show that the CPU is pegged, and can't do anything. I also see where the kernel tanked, probably the reason for the SoD. Interesting that adb worked - I don't think this condition was created from poor signal.

Edit - I suck at following logs :p. What were you doing right before it started acting haywire? I see a bunch of stuff like a task killer running, twitdroid, some SMS messages...

No matter how you slice it, in your logcat there's a TON of "CPU pegged" messages, blocking stuff&things from happening :p.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

what governor are you using?


I know from doing this on HD2 that the radio makes a BIG difference in things like SOD and freezes, have you guys tried flashing different radios and noting logcat differences in the cpu as well as SOD?

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I was using the phone talking, got off and hit the power button which is remapped to hang up per F22's rootfs and startup.txt addition, have used it in the past and no issues. As far as sms messages, they may have been coming in along with twitdroid getting messages, I do have taskiller also. And I agree, there were tons of CPU pegged all thoughout it. I wasn't even pressing a ton of buttons on it trying to make it do a million things at once. Maybe I'll try removing taskiller and see if that improves it at all, although this isn't a regular occurrence.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I'm not saying the task killer is the culprit, I just saw that running in the middle of the mess :p.

What do you mean by governor? I don't think we have tried different radio versions - I assume you mean radio firmware, flash radio firmware thru bootloader/WinMo right? I don't know if anyone has done any experimentation on radio firmware, but our RIL is extremely borked - you HD2 folk have it easy, phh just wrote a wrapper so you guys don't even have your own RIL code :p. We're using the Vogue RIL, modified to work for our devices. It is in the process of being overhauled, which I am ridiculously excited for :D.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Are you referring to different radios in winmo?

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I'm talking about the CPU governor built into the kernel, and I can tell you flashing a different radio firmware could have some huge effects at some point, if you know something is borked like the ril then yeah it's no mystery as to what is messed up.

can't wait to see the new ril and it's only going to get better from here on out that's for sure.

That's interesting....maybe we should list radios that we're using to see if particular ones r causing issues.


Sent fro my FRX05 using Tapatalk

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

I think you should because like on HD2 if you use a 2.07.xx radio you get SOD a lot, if you use 2.12.50 radio you get better battery life in WP7 and more drivers work, and if you use 2.15.00 radio you get really good stability and battery life in Android...

wouldn't be a bad idea to try different radios along with fixing the RIL

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

Thanks for the info. I'm currently in android right now but later tonight will reset to winmo and see what radio I'm on, and try one of the others and see how it goes.

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

just for grins you might do something like make a spreadsheet and put some logcat reads as well as mah drain and SOD frequency or something with 2 or 3 radios and see if anything significant turns up.

Wow, ghost town around here for the past 5 days. I just got back from a snowboarding trip to Mammoth Mountain. Awesome snow conditions but had to drive on snow cables (not even chains) for 20 miles at 30 mph :( Yeah, i don't have a 4 wheel drive. It was freakin' cold... 15 deg F... i know how you feel now, fishingmedic. Awesome conditions for snowboarding; thank goodness only a few kids and their families decided to show up during their spring break because there were no lines on the lifts and gondola. Wished I could stay another day snowboarding, oh well, next year.

Back OT, can't wait for the RIL fix, frx05 has been running fine with this kernel with the occasional reboot to winmo (happening to me more than normal now); I had to switch back to winmo while I was at mammoth because I needed something more reliable.

BTW, just got me a new Android toy: the Viewsonic G-tablet (same processor as the Xoom); I got it at www.woot.com for $285! (by way of slickdeals.net). Planning to flash it with VEGAn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I27zrnBoI14 - check out the quadrant score at the end, I think it's 2422!); this will smoke the Ipad 2 at half the price. Waiting for the HoneyComb port!

Sent from my FRX05-ized TP2

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

YOU SUCK!!!!!!!!! for the last 2 days I've been looking at the gtab just to root....but am also looking at the adam----more ports and more on board mem. $200 more so that's where my problem is. let me know PM how it's going (tether via phone and whatnot) almost have my wife convinced that I NEED one \\:D/

EDIT: I could get the evo, or the gtab----about the same price. decisions decisions

Hey john, I'll let you know how everything goes; I couldn't pass up on the deal; it's $100 cheaper than normal and the hardware is almost as good as the xoom; it should be delivered next week. Gonna flash it with vegan and use my Tp2 to wifi tether it like you said; I'm glad we're using sprint; I saw the news on ppcgeeks that at&t now knows if you tether your phone. I can't wait for all the tablets to come out so this will hold me over for a year or so. I'll get my fiance an Ipad 2 for her bday in a few months but you won't find ever buying one for myself; of course I'll jailbreak that before I give it to her ;).

Wow, didn't realize tiad8 was banned :( very unfortunate there.

Sent from my FRX05-ized TP2

Re: [TESTING] Updated 3/11/11 New Kernel - TONS of changes!!
 

good luck, if she's anything like my wife (95 lb 5' nothing Italian) she will kick your ass for touching her stuff....it took me 3 days to convince her that I needed to root and run custom on her EVO. Just watching the vids on YT....may have to "accidentally" pick one up tonight