NAND space issue

[peacelovefleshbones]

I don't seem to have pissed anyone off with my constant question shouting, so here's another...


Would it be possible/convenient for some gracious dev out there to make an installable pnd (to the nand, like pnd_run or the codec pack) that redirects every other pnd that wants to save data to the NAND to a user designated spot on an SD card (preferably the same one that the pnds themselves are on) in such a way that the pnds do not know that they are being redirected. Like, it would essentially lie, tell the pnds that the new location IS mnt/utmp/whatever and thus solve the dwindling nand space issue?


I know this might be a time consuming thing but if one person could get this kind of thing done it would make up for everyone that doesn't have time to update their pnd releases of programs so that they dont write to NAND. A lot of devs try to keep their programs from doing that but it simply isn't possible for many to fix them all.


As a humble sacrifice to the mighty dev gods here is a picture of a homeless dog that is interested in the thing you were just talking about.





EDIT: he may not actually be homeless.

 

[EvilDragon]

The current firmware already redirects everything that is being written to ~ into the appdata directory on the SD Card.

 

[sebt3]

The current firmware already redirects everything that is being written to ~ into the appdata directory on the SD Card.

I know 2 exceptions to that :


gconf+dbus allow programs to write to the real home (on NAND) and there is a function in glib that return the real home and some program use that. I tried to fix that in all my PNDs but I may have missed one or 2


what are the PNDs that write to your NAND ?

 

[sverm]

I'm sure the use of overlays could redirect all writes to Sd to any path, not just Pnd-based ones.

 

[Fworg64]

I think also what he could mean is that instead of mounting in the nand, at /mnt/utemp/ it would mount on an SD card. Only thing i see pointless about this is that youll run out of ram most likely before you run out of space to mount things. Also, there would be no point to this as most PND's (if not all) do get unmounted from mnt/utmp if they exit correctly.

 

[sverm]

Agreed. I just don't like all the OS non-Pnd apps writing to .files and .folders in my home directory, that's in the NAND.


In the little world inside my head, the Pandora requires an SD card to save any settings for any users. In any other situation without an Sd card to write to, it uses a read only pre-configured guest account.


But then again, it's easy for me to be an armchair OS developer when my greatest Linux achievement is recompiling the kernel. And don't remember how to do it...

 

[Fworg64]

I suppose you could run from an SD card, that way you don't ever really have to worry about the NAND, but then you lose the ability to swap one of your sd cards, not that big of a deal IMO. I haven't tried it myself, but from what i hear its rather easy to set up.

 

[F_Slim]

what are the PNDs that write to your NAND ?

BabyPanda for example still uses ~/Applications for the cache (running Beta 5). Which is quite problematic for a web browser on the Pandora.


I think it is possible to redirect $Home in the Pxml as well, but I assume that is the same workaround done by the most recent OS as well?

 

[mcobit]

Is that a qt app?


QT_Cache_Dir variable points to the nand, too afaik.

 

[moxie]

And QupZilla. Even though StreaK specifically stated that it didn't, on a direct question.

 

[laurencevde]

You can move your home-dir to the sd-card with "usermod -md [/new/home/dir] [username]". That'd do the trick.


Then symlink /tmp (or make it a tmpfs and enable swap) and /var (or parts of it) to somewhere on your sd-card, and you'll barely see any writes to nand.


But please note that you should use a native linux-filesystem, not FAT, on your sd-card if you do.

 

[peacelovefleshbones]

You can move your home-dir to the sd-card with "usermod -md [/new/home/dir] [username]". That'd do the trick.


Then symlink /tmp (or make it a tmpfs and enable swap) and /var (or parts of it) to somewhere on your sd-card, and you'll barely see any writes to nand.


But please note that you should use a native linux-filesystem, not FAT, on your sd-card if you do.

Thank you, I will try this. Probably will make an ext2 partition on my sd card.

The current firmware already redirects everything that is being written to ~ into the appdata directory on the SD Card.

I know 2 exceptions to that :


gconf+dbus allow programs to write to the real home (on NAND) and there is a function in glib that return the real home and some program use that. I tried to fix that in all my PNDs but I may have missed one or 2


what are the PNDs that write to your NAND ?

The current contents of my home/mnt/utmp folder (note that these are directories)


beastieworker 0.4.0


chroma


fennec


ffmpeg (smallffmpegui)


hdonkfirefox001 (firefox)


hellicarrier


hellspider


opendune


pandebian


qemu


race


snapsnap


transball2


transmission


wbar


wwpuzzlewiz (wind and water)


youtube-dl (possibly the remnant of that simple youtube downloader i replaced)


youtube app


The total space taken up is 32mb which wouldnt be a problem except that is out of something like 132mb total free space on the nand and these things don't go away when you close the program. Some didnt even go away when I deleted the pnd or replaced it or whatever. I dont have notecase pro anymore, i have a different youtube downloader now but i still have the old directory in there.


I dont know the basic functions necessary to alter these permission protected files because I'm, strictly speaking, more of a linux consumer than a user. What's the word... oh yea, a leech. In any case I only have 99mb left on the nand and with a 128GB sd card I plan on definitely downloading more apps. Any help is appreciated.


Also, I use my spare sd card slot a lot so booting from sd card is not a good option for me.