Grrr, Hard to find info!! HOWTO: Mount TF Swap Partition

[daniel.santos]

Ok, for those of you who already know this, shutup! I had to dig through the source for the mmc drivers (that Motorola released thankfully) for my answer I have a 1GB TransFlash and I decided that I want a 64MB swap partition (I don't like the idea of a swap file). Couldn't figure out how to create a device for the damn thing!!

Ok, so for any newbies that run across this:

fdisk /dev/mmca

Use m for help, you want to create 2 "primary partitions", one for your normal data (a big one) and one for your swap partition. Each block is 1k, so do some math. Oh yea, and make sure you don't have any data you want on this thing...

Then format your main partition, let's say that's partition 1:

mkfs.ext3 -b 1024 /dev/mmca1

Then you gotta create a device for the blasted mmca2 device and format it as well.

mknod /tmp/mmca2 b 243 2
mkfs.ext2 /tmp/mmca2
mkswap /tmp/mmca2

The major device value can be found in e680-a780/linux-2.4.17/drivers/mmc/mmc_media.c:50 of the Motorola-release kernel src. Also, it has to go in tmp (or something) because /dev is read-only. I imagine you can stick it somewhere else so you don't have to create it each time you boot, but I'm planning doing a flash that'll let me get into init.d anyway, so I don't really care where you stick it!

After you run mkswap, you'll discover that the bastard STOLE 4096 precious bytes from you. You'll be left feeling empty and alone with nobody to listen to your pathetic whining. Sad huh?

Mount the goddam things:

mount /dev/mmca1 /mmc/mmca1
swapon /tmp/mmca2

Grats, now you can feel like you're cool, cause I don't. I hope this helps somebody cause it was a pain finding that major device number. Happy geeking!

Daniel

[akhaliq]

too good daniel i never knew it. this also can make ways for ppl who want multiple partitions in MMC.

btw, how to make it continue to work after reboot? is modding of CG33 only solution?

[daniel.santos]

HAH! I haven't gotten that far yet. But now I know where to start --- search for CG33 on the forum!

I'm tyring to figure out where I downloaded the binaries for the ext2/3 and jbd drivers. I'm writing up a wiki on it on wiki.openezx.org.

But yea, that's my next step. I would like to have my phone boot to where /etc is in flashdisk. I'm thinking about tearing up my /diska and making an 8MB partition that I mount in /etc at startup so I can screw things up better (I don't want an important file system like that mounted on a removable drive).

I'll post my wiki page when I'm done.

Daniel

[epinter]

you can create special devices on /ezxlocal (i'm using /ezxlocal/dev) ... better than /tmp ....

[benjat]

sorry to interupting, just wondering is this way is same with the memexpand and the swap script that found in the forum? just want to know..

[akhaliq]

no. that uses a swapfile.

[benjat]

so this one exactly work like the linux swap is it? i would like to try it if it can make change in perfomance.. the memexpand make my phone fast sometime, and sometime slow.. i dont know why..

[daniel.santos]

so this one exactly work like the linux swap is it?

Yar, that's the real deal.

you can create special devices on /ezxlocal (i'm using /ezxlocal/dev) ... better than /tmp ....

Yea, but until you have your ext2 drivers loaded, it's not going to help. Currently, i have the a script named modules in my /ezxlocal/download/QTDownLoad/Startup directory that performs all of these steps. NEO-Installer runs all scripts in this dir when it's initiated.

#!/bin/bash

# Load modules for ext2 and ext3
cd /ezxlocal/modules
insmod /ezxlocal/modules/jbd.o
insmod /ezxlocal/modules/ext2.o
insmod /ezxlocal/modules/ext3.o

# Mount our very fucking awsome ext3 device!
mount -t ext3 -o noatime /dev/mmca1 /mmc/mmca1

# Create a device for our fucking awsome ext2 swap partition!
mknod /tmp/mmca2 b 243 2
swapon /tmp/mmca2

Pardon the comments, that's the actual file!

One more thing, I've hard some people raise concerns that a jornaling filesystem (ext3 as opposed to ext2) will reduce the life expectancy of a flash card and I've also heard the argument that the wear of an ext3 file system is nothing compared to FAT16. Personally, I'm sticking with ext3. This is highly stable in the event of a crash.

Next step is for somebody to mount the 40GB hard drive on a hacked iPod via bluetooth. Any takers?

Daniel

[blackhawk]

Not write access time to the filesystem can reduce r/w operation (faster, longer lifetime).
mount -t ext3 -o noatime /dev/mmca1 /mmc/mmca1
You can read default /dev/mmca1 mount options in /etc/init.d/mountfs.sh, uid and gid can be important for file permission. Congrat, you can write a symbolic link on /mmc/mmca1 right now

[daniel.santos]

Thanks, I changed my script and my previous code snippet