[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Re: Installing packages in extra storage?

[From: Brad Burleson]

Hey Gustavo-

On 12/14/05, Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri <barbieri at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't get it, how swap is related to installing software on extra
> storage?


I think the connection is simply to help manage resources - by moving
installed programs to the MMC, as well as enabling swap, will give the
machine more memory to work with.

What I did to solve this problem was partition the MMC into both swap (24MB)
and an ext2fs file system (40MB).
Then I used tar to backup the contents of /var/lib/install, then copied
those files to the MMC.  I did an "rm -rf /var/lib/install", then during
boot set the system up to mount my ext2fs file system over /var/lib/install.

By doing this all programs installed - by default - will now go to the MMC.
I think this shoud be the default configuration, actually (well, maybe
replace the swap partition with a VFAT partition - as soon as I buy a 1GB
card I'm not going to risk damaging it).  I also replaced ~/MyDocs with a
symbolic link to /var/lib/install/MyDocs to free up even more space.

The only problem:  both 'free', '/proc/meminfo' and the little status bar
plug-in all report far more memory in use than I'd expect to see.  I _know_
I deleted the contents of /var/lib/install (as well as ~/MyDocs), and when I
install new programs I see my memory used go up.

I assume this is simply a result of how memory is managed, or have I done
something stupid?



Also, I want to install software not only on MMC, but on network
> shares and have them visible automatically. Imagine that I want my
> "program-that-I-just-use-at-home" to be on a NFS/SMB share at home, so
> when I connect it will be available. When I'm at work, it'll just
> vanish and no space is wasted.



That's a great idea.  Though in my (limited) experience, NFS and Samba don't
handle being disconnected and reconnected at will.

Brad.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-developers/attachments/20051214/3623a253/attachment.htm