On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Alexander Sack asac@linaro.org wrote:
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 8:51 AM, Jeremy Chang jeremy.chang@linaro.org wrote:
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:57 AM, Alexander Sack asac@linaro.org wrote:
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 8:07 AM, Jeremy Chang jeremy.chang@linaro.org wrote:
Same time, we could rethink the partition layout, Partition layout is wikied at https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/DevBoards. The original partition layout define is from https://bugs.launchpad.net/linaro-image-tools/+bug/724207
Regarding to the partition offset for our validation farm install, we may need to have two more partitions for testboot and testrootfs as Paul suggested and adjust the partition offset to fit better.
I think the sdcard partition should be vfat format instead of ext4, at least for now as I know, vold only supports vfat format.
For the hardcoded vold.fstab, somehow we need to modify the vold for using the "by-partition-name" way in vold.fstab and the init as well.
To me, vold.fstab is hardcoded so it's put under device/linaro/beagleboard,
For "by-name" way, I think it may could not be that urgent to support this, or we should just spend time and send a patch for this to AOSP.?
I don't want testboot and testrootfs partition to be on normal installs ... just in the validation farm. I would really prefer if we get by-name sent to AOSP asap. But I don't understand why by-name support would be less reasonable for vold than for init. Can you elaborate?
Hi, Alexander: There will be more needed to modify for by-name support in vold. vold uses partition number to indicate the certain partition that we want to mount as you can see the format in vold.fstab. and vold uses a an partition array for maintaining the partitions. You can see the array mPartMinors in DirectVolume.cpp.
So adding "by-name" support in vold looks like not easy task and giving the limit to vold.
OK understood. How important is it that we use vold for sdcard (rather than by-name in init.rc)? alternatively, we could install vold during install in lmc and during lava install and set the correct value there.
As my understanding, through vold mounting the sdcard partition and informing MountService, the sdcard partition will be used by Android as an external storage for like installing apks. Also applications can utilize the external storage to store files, like 0xbench will check the status of the Android external storage and intend to store the test result there.
In java code, Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() can be used to get the external storage File path.
If we just mount sdcard partition in init.rc, the partition will not be any special but just a mounted partition not knowing by Android framework.
vold is a service that should be launched during the booting. We can also install and restart it as anytime as we want.
Note: on mx5 we have a 1 partition offset because there is an additional non-data-fs partition for u-boot on sdcard.
So I think vold.fstab is not common but a hardware/product dependent file.
Regards, -Jeremy Chang
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- Alexander