EZX and OPIE simultaneously

[lurker]

cyph

Don't you mind to use squashfs instead of cramfs to save space on flashcard?

[rpconnect]

@lurker
it looks like the squashfs read module would have to be first compiled against the phone's kernel sources, but it looks like you already did this (from the a780 thread) do you know what kinds of compression ratios to expect and how it compares to cramfs?

If the compression ratio benefit was worth it, i don't think it would be hard at all to repackage the cramfs versions for squashfs format; the modules could be loaded as part of the opie.lin script.

[lurker]

rpconnect

I've tested squashfs with small opie image (which is 21 mb in cramfs) and got 18.5 mb image. I awaited better results (because I have a large pack of .jpg and .gif files, it's 229 mb unpacked, 68 mb squashed and more than 100 mb cramfs'ed),
but compression isn't the only advantage:
- this test shows better perfomance over cramfs
- squashfs image is created times faster than cramfs one (useful for developers/testers/hackers etc)
- cramfs is abandoned, while squashfs is improved constantly

[rpconnect]

@lurker
Thanks for the info!!! from the results link you posted it looks like I/O speed is also improved, although the improvement was quite a bit better for reading of CDRom than for harddrive access, but as you said, they are still improving squashfs and the trend seems to be even faster access times.

I'd like to try applying this to cyph's latest openembedded build of opie; the current cramfs size for this build is 124 MB and i'm looking forward to seeing how much benefit squashfs has for this package.

thanks again for sharing such cool development results!!!

[lurker]

you're always welcome

tried to squash 99 mb image of opie-oe (don't have 124 mb version now), it became 84 mb

[rpconnect]

what about speed? Do you notice any performance improvement with a squashfs-based opie package? i know opie has been slow but i'm not sure if that has been because of the proc. or because of accessing everything from the cramfs.

[ciklee66]

To start off:
1. Unzip ezx-opie.zip
2. Copy the opie directory into the root of your SD/MMC
3. In the phone's file manager, go to the opie directory and click on startopie.lin
4. Your phone's screen will be painted a solid yellow. Wait. Starting OPIE for the first time takes around 1min. The script will create the swapfile and OPIE has to do first time initializations.

I'll aready follow this step. My phone screen painted a solid yellow. I wait until 30 minutes but nothing happend. So wgat is the problem. I turn off my phone again.

Please someone can help me.

[rpconnect]

Opie takes a wile to start and all you see is the yellow proxy screen during this time. wait longer, at least a couple of minutes (i've found that its just about one cigarretes worth of waiting, if you dont smoke they maybe go outside and run around the block and when you get back opie will be ready for you).

Opie always takes a long time to start after the phone's been rebooted. once its started, you can use the phone lock switch to first lock the phone, then unlock it and you are back to the native EZX apps. When you re-click on opie.lin opie should come back in a lot less time, about 10 seconds.

[lurker]

I've measured startup time of whole opie and opie-reader only (I simply changed "./opie" to "./opie-reader -qws" in startup script) with cramfs and squashfs images. Each test was run 5 times and average results were calculcated. Swapfile was unpacked and unmounted before each test, images were unmounted too.

Results are:
whole opie on cramfs - 75 sec
whole opie on squashfs - 70 sec
opie-reader only on cramfs - 32 sec
opie-reader only on squashfs - 19 sec (!!!)

Switching back to EZX took about 2 sec in each case.

[lurker]

interesting - opie-reader starts in 13 sec without swap