[Kairnage]

EDIT- I combined the two installs into one thread.

PLEASE READ EVERYTHING BEFORE PROCEEDING

I have an edited vold.fstab for the Alpha 2 ICS and Gingerbread . It will swap the internal storage with the external storage for the /mnt/sdcard. So instead of the system only having 2.7GB it will have, as in my case 29GB ready to use. So far I have not come across any issues installing new app or using system apps.

You will need adb drivers installed to use the .cmd file included. Just unzip and run the .cmd file when you are ready. It will overwrite the existing and place a voldorig.fstab on the tablet in case you have issues.

Before running it would be best to back up any apps and data you are currently using. Once run it will replace the internal memory with the external microsd so you will not have access to any data you currently have saved under /mnt/sdcard.

Remember as with any mod you use it at your own risk, but of course I will help out with any problems you may have.

ICS DOWNLOAD

GINGERBREAD DOWNLOAD

EDIT - I have attached a zip file that will create a backup of the original vold.fstab for you. Just download it and unzip it to the same directory you unzippd the ICS or Gingerbread version to and llet it overwrite the pushvold.cmd file before running it.

Attached File(s)

•  voldnew.zip (277.96K)
  Number of downloads: 64

This post has been edited by Kairnage: 23 June 2012 - 10:42 PM

[bmhathaway]

Could this be done with Gingerbread?

[Kairnage]

bmhathaway, on 29 May 2012 - 10:35 PM, said:

Could this be done with Gingerbread?

Working on it. I think I know what I did wrong when I did it.

BTW hats off to the guys leeh33 and smyrfcheto @ TechKnow. They had a thread requesting a stock vold file for the T02A and I uploaded one. That got me thinking about the 2.3 one I had been working on and got me off my but to try it on ICS.

[jgs2424]

This is awesome, thanks! Saving for implementing next time I reflash my ROM. I could never get that link2sd thing to work right.

[Kairnage]

jgs2424, on 30 May 2012 - 07:08 AM, said:

This is awesome, thanks! Saving for implementing next time I reflash my ROM. I could never get that link2sd thing to work right.

I am going to put it into my 2.3.4 ROM as well.

[TRR]

Kairnage, on 29 May 2012 - 05:43 PM, said:

You will need adb drivers installed to use the .cmd file included.

Sorry for the newbie question, but what are "adb drivers", where do I get them for the Alpha 2, and how do I install them?

I'm a longtime Windows geek, but an Android newbie.

[Kairnage]

TRR, on 01 June 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

Sorry for the newbie question, but what are "adb drivers", where do I get them for the Alpha 2, and how do I install them?

I'm a longtime Windows geek, but an Android newbie.

adb drivers

Driver install instructions

[TRR]

Excellent! Thank you.

Further question: It would seem that once this mod has been applied, there is very little use for the 2.6 GB or so of storage space that was formerly /mnt/sdcard and is now addressed as /mnt/extsd. Is there any way to reallocate some (or all) of this space back to the internal device storage?

[Kairnage]

TRR, on 02 June 2012 - 08:45 AM, said:

Excellent! Thank you.

Further question: It would seem that once this mod has been applied, there is very little use for the 2.6 GB or so of storage space that was formerly /mnt/sdcard and is now addressed as /mnt/extsd. Is there any way to reallocate some (or all) of this space back to the internal device storage?

It can but it is not a simple process. If the system starts getting full it is easier just to use app2sd .

[TRR]

Kairnage, on 02 June 2012 - 12:04 PM, said:

It can but it is not a simple process.

How complicated?

I have (well, my wife has) an Alpha 2 that we've been using for a few weeks now. It came with 2.3 and I did the firmware update to 4.0 and some other basic tweaking. I've got another brand new one ordered (for me) that's supposed to come with 4.0 pre-installed. I'll be putting a 32 GB SD card in it. I'd like to tweak the 4GB built-in storage allocation on it before I start doing anything else with it, if possible.

The idea of having a couple of gig's of useless storage space that could be put to much better use just bugs me.

[Kairnage]

TRR, on 02 June 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

How complicated?

I have (well, my wife has) an Alpha 2 that we've been using for a few weeks now. It came with 2.3 and I did the firmware update to 4.0 and some other basic tweaking. I've got another brand new one ordered (for me) that's supposed to come with 4.0 pre-installed. I'll be putting a 32 GB SD card in it. I'd like to tweak the 4GB built-in storage allocation on it before I start doing anything else with it, if possible.

The idea of having a couple of gig's of useless storage space that could be put to much better use just bugs me.

Its decompiling and editing system files. Some people have made tools for various phones and tablets, and I think Clockwork mod may have that ability depending on the device. You can google "resize android system partition" and read up. Most of the tools require a custom ROM or specific bootloader to do it. Also Google ClockworkMod for Allwinner". It definitely is a lot of work for little result. What i just did for a neighbor was setup their internal will their compete e-book library and music. They had something like 1100 books between PD books and Barnes and Noble. Since they don't plan on reading all of them anytime soon it was a good way to use it. Stuff that they won't need to change.

[TRR]

Kairnage, on 02 June 2012 - 04:39 PM, said:

Its decompiling and editing system files. ... It definitely is a lot of work for little result.

Fair enough.

Thanks for the info.

[Kairnage]

TRR, on 02 June 2012 - 09:25 PM, said:

Fair enough.

Thanks for the info.

To be fair it is something I am playing with now, but not very successfully. I was able to make the user system larger, but when I tried to make the system larger it failed. It made my brain hurt lol. I don't mind releasing stuff that if it screws up it is 99% of the time fixable, without re-imaging the tablet. But this if it fail is always a re-image, so for most users it become a huge pain.

But you can look at it this way, if you had a larger user partition it would feel more like a waste. See the bright side LOL!

[TRR]

Kairnage, on 01 June 2012 - 11:04 PM, said:

adb drivers

Driver install instructions

I downloaded the adb drivers (android_usb_fsl.zip) and extracted them to a folder. On the Alpha 2 I have USB Debugging turned on. When I plug it in via USB to my XP machine, XP detects a new device named "Android". I point it to the folder with the downloaded drivers and it examines them and says there are no drivers there that match my hardware.

The link to the Driver install instructions seems to be instructions for getting the driver installed that is used when flashing the firmware. I've got that one installed fine, using the utility that comes with the factory firmware update. I had to in order to update the firmware to ICS.

So I'm still unable to get the ADB driver installed.

Further help?

[Kairnage]

TRR, on 06 June 2012 - 09:11 AM, said:

I downloaded the adb drivers (android_usb_fsl.zip) and extracted them to a folder. On the Alpha 2 I have USB Debugging turned on. When I plug it in via USB to my XP machine, XP detects a new device named "Android". I point it to the folder with the downloaded drivers and it examines them and says there are no drivers there that match my hardware.

The link to the Driver install instructions seems to be instructions for getting the driver installed that is used when flashing the firmware. I've got that one installed fine, using the utility that comes with the factory firmware update. I had to in order to update the firmware to ICS.

So I'm still unable to get the ADB driver installed.

Further help?

The instructions would still be basically the same, you can't let XP decide which is the right driver so you make all the manual choices. When XP detects android does it ask for drivers? Normally when you see Android instead of unkonown or "crane" it has adb drivers already.

[TRR]

Kairnage, on 06 June 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

The instructions would still be basically the same, you can't let XP decide which is the right driver so you make all the manual choices. When XP detects android does it ask for drivers? Normally when you see Android instead of unkonown or "crane" it has adb drivers already.

Well, I never could force XP to accept the adb driver as-is.

In XP's Device Manager, it was showing up under the 'Other devices' category as 'Android' with a big question mark icon by it, meaning it needed the driver. I looked at the properties for it and on the Details tab I looked to see what the hardware ID of the Android device was reported as. For my Alpha2, it was reported as 'usb\vid_18d1&pid_0003&mi_01'. (This is what was listed as the "Matching Device ID" in the list of items on the Details tab.)

So, I edited the android_winusb.inf file to add this ID to the list of compatible devices, like this:

 [Google.NTx86]
; Freescale
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C01
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C02&MI_01
; Skytex Skypad Alpha2
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003&MI_01

[Google.NTamd64]
; Freescale
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C01
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C02&MI_01
; Skytex Skypad Alpha2
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003&MI_01

Once I did that, the driver happily installed and adb worked just fine.

[Kairnage]

TRR, on 07 June 2012 - 09:06 PM, said:

Well, I never could force XP to accept the adb driver as-is.

In XP's Device Manager, it was showing up under the 'Other devices' category as 'Android' with a big question mark icon by it, meaning it needed the driver. I looked at the properties for it and on the Details tab I looked to see what the hardware ID of the Android device was reported as. For my Alpha2, it was reported as 'usb\vid_18d1&pid_0003&mi_01'. (This is what was listed as the "Matching Device ID" in the list of items on the Details tab.)

So, I edited the android_winusb.inf file to add this ID to the list of compatible devices, like this:

 [Google.NTx86]
; Freescale
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C01
%CompositeAdbInterface% 	= USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C02&MI_01
; Skytex Skypad Alpha2
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003
%CompositeAdbInterface% 	= USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003&MI_01

[Google.NTamd64]
; Freescale
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C01
%CompositeAdbInterface% 	= USB_Install, USB\VID_15A2&PID_0C02&MI_01
; Skytex Skypad Alpha2
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003
%CompositeAdbInterface% 	= USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003&MI_01

Once I did that, the driver happily installed and adb worked just fine.

It installed for me in XP, Vista, and Win7 with no issues other than when it showed up in other I deleted the device and told it to delete the existing drivers as well, rebooted and installed the drives. Usually when it picks something other than unknown or other it is because of an old install of something else. It should have rejected Freescale as it is crane. But still cool your got it.

[TRR]

Kairnage, on 07 June 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Usually when it picks something other than unknown or other it is because of an old install of something else.

This was on a brand-new (minutes old) installation of XP. Adding the hardware ID worked so nicely that I tried it on another XP machine with another tablet that a friend has. His is a Flytouch/Superpad (we think) and I used the same driver and the same trick with adding his hardware ID to the android_winusb.inf file. It worked perfectly.

So this is a handy trick to remember if anyone else runs into issues getting the usb adb driver to install.

[borg]

Kairnage, on 07 June 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

It installed for me in XP, Vista, and Win7 with no issues other than when it showed up in other I deleted the device and told it to delete the existing drivers as well, rebooted and installed the drives. Usually when it picks something other than unknown or other it is because of an old install of something else. It should have rejected Freescale as it is crane. But still cool your got it.

Great job TRR this worked! I really appreciate it. I had to do something like this for a WM850 tab. I'lll just have to make sure that the Galaxy still works. It should. Also, it shows up as an Android phone in the device manager. I don't see any reason to care yet.

[Kairnage]

TRR, on 08 June 2012 - 08:06 AM, said:

This was on a brand-new (minutes old) installation of XP. Adding the hardware ID worked so nicely that I tried it on another XP machine with another tablet that a friend has. His is a Flytouch/Superpad (we think) and I used the same driver and the same trick with adding his hardware ID to the android_winusb.inf file. It worked perfectly.

So this is a handy trick to remember if anyone else runs into issues getting the usb adb driver to install.

Actually why not repaxk the driver and create a post here with it attached as an alternative driver method?