Running apps from memory card - Dont Panic!

[rogers]

Alright, there have been plenty of panic threads about applications only downloading to the phone. Stop it! Applications WILL be able to be installed to the SDcard! There have been rumors cited that Google will add that option to the OS, and even if they don't we are running on a linux kernel, and apparently can use a terminal. The fix would be simple.

=======================

The commands below are NOT TO BE RUN on your phone. I will not have my hands on the phone until Tuesday, if you feel like doing this before then you need to do some exploration first to figure out the proper directories to move over to the SDcard. This is just what you would do in any linux based system.

Say you find out the bulk of your apps are in:

/usr/local/apps/

So you have like

/usr/local/apps/breadcrumbz.apk
/usr/local/apps/opera.apk
/usr/local/apps/...

You would just open up the terminal (which I've heard alot about and am very excited about having linux shell access on my phone!) and enter...

~ $ mv /usr/local/apps /sdcard/
~ $ mount --bind /sdcard/apps /usr/local/apps
~ $ echo /sdcard/apps /usr/local/apps bind defaults 0 0 >> /etc/fstab

And BAM you just moved all your apps to the storage card and set it up so that whenever android accesses or writes to /usr/local/apps it's writing to the storage card. The power of linux haha.

This is NOTHING to be worried about.

[richard]

Pretty cool! There will be lnux shell access to the G1?

[Driguez]

Great!!! Thanks for providing us with this info!!

[RegGuheert]

Agreed, that's the obvious fix. I've stated that here previously.

Do you have any idea how to start a terminal on the G1?

If so, do you have any idea how to gain root access to make such a change?

Reg

[kaysesoze]

this is good info..

[NetCom]

When Vincent published three downsides of the G1 I was kind of in questioning why such a basic stuff were not thought of before release. But at the same time there is very strong faith into this phone once I summarized all of the options of this phone.
This phone is revolutionary on different multiple ways that you just keep find them out and they just keep popping out. How it seems it will keep to amaze its proud owners all the time ... now that's what I call SLAMDUNK

[G-won]

Wow, sh access? That would be like... taking my Ubuntu on the go O___O

*soils himself again*

[CJ Chitwood]

i was just reading over this thread a second time and wondering ... what would happen if, saying this were the way it was to be done, an Android update were to come along and rewrite your /etc/fstab for instance and the phone no longer mounts to the sdcard for its apps... what would the phone do then?

[pllb]

i doubt an update would mess with fstab but i agree with op..an easy fix. been using nix for 10 years

[DDM123]

Well in any case, it would be a good idea to only put non-crucial apps on SD. A program could easily 'ln -s /sdcard/bin/whatever /usr/local/bin/whatever'

However, while mounting your SD card via USB, those programs wouldn't be available, and the kernel may freak out. This could be fixable.

I'd really like it if the Browser cache went to SD instead of internal memory. SD isn't THAT slow.