So as some of you are aware when we buy our devices they come pre-loaded with the most hideous copy of Android known to man, Android in it’s nature requires many different partitions due to how it is setup.
On CoreELEC when using installtointernal we format some of these partitions and make use of them, however there is still a number of partitions that are sat there doing nothing.
I recently tried OSMC on one of my devices using a modified Vero3 image, the partition layout of the Vero3 is the exact same as your typical Android Amlogic box with 10-11 (can’t remember the exact number) different partitions, but the guys over there have done something really clever.
They have used LVM to combine all usable Android partitions into 1 big single partition for use by their users, the result is 14/16 GB of internal storage being made available to the user.
I began to wonder if we could do the same as this is something that has always irked me.
So with a few hours of tinkering with CoreELEC this evening, I managed to make some headway on it.
The end result is an extra 2 GB of usable /storage data on a 16GB device.
Now is it worth bringing this to CoreELEC? I will let you guys decide.
This would seem to be a very good way of using all available space without the hassle of a user dealing directly with existing partitions.
Have you come up with any negative side to doing this?
Would it prevent a reinstall of the original OS at some future time … maybe by potentially overwriting something the original would expect to be present?
If so it might be worth a re-think.
I think the AML USB Burning tool restores all, providing critical blocks are left alone.
I would be surprised if @anon88919003 has overlooked that fact (especially after removing installtointernal from LE due to the complications that might arise from it, only a few months ago)
An extra 2gb is not a lot. I suspect most users are watching movies, so they will be using external storage.
So I don’t think it’s worth the effort, but then I find running from usb is fast enough.
The script would work the exact same way it does now where you enter installtointernal on the console and all the magic happens automatically with no extra headache for users.
The only downside would be that it wouldn’t work on older releases and only newer ones.
The script would work the exact same way it does now where you enter installtointernal on the console and all the magic happens automatically with no extra headache for users.
The only downside would be that it wouldn’t work on older releases and only newer ones.
If there is no downside going forward then definitely yes from me.
Update: I finally finished implementing the idea, total usable space is now 13.4GB as opposed to 12.1GB on a 16GB device, this is only 600MB shy of using a 16GB USB flash drive/SD card.
It is possible to squeeze a little more out of the usable space by using the uboot logo + recovery partitions but it didn’t seem worth it.
Updating works fine and there is no regressions for people installed with the original method or on external media.
It’s not a great deal more space but there is more room for all your thumbnails and add-ons now I guess.
I’m a bit confused, has the new type of installtointernal (“ITI”) been implemented in 8.90.5? If yes how do I use it compared to the previous type of ITI? Does it have a new name like ITIv2? Or has it just replaced the previous ITI, so I just run it in the same way?
