[MOD] ext2 file system for /system - Feb. 17 UPDATED

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cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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In short, what I will be doing here is mounting the /system partition as file system EXT2. Default is EXT4. The reason for doing this is simple. The /system partition is more of an access database where information is read and never written. The goal here is to remove journaling and not only journaling but the redundancy of the code tree of EXT4 by simply killing the EXT4 journal and leaving it mounted and formatted as EXT4.

EXT4 – The file system uses a function called journaling. Journaling, in short, is a file system log. What this provides to you as the user is a quick method of recovery if there is ever a system failure: unclean shutdown, file corruption, etc. If there is ever a problem, the journal is called and the data is restored with no issues. The cost of this journaling feature, however, is CPU time/usage. CPU cycles are used to write the journal to the disk.

EXT2 – This file system does not use journal. No recovery method, etc. So if something is corrupted, there is no way to recover corrupted files/blocks/data.


What does all of this mean? – Simple. What it means is those of us who are rooted, running a stable ROM/Kernel combo, and using a backup method such as TWRP or CWM, can safely use EXT2 for /system without any worry because all we need to do is make a backup of our /system partition via recovery, tuck it away on our internal SD card and save it for a rainy day - restore it if there is every an unclean shutdown (battery pull, reboot caused by an unstable kernel, etc.).

What benefits will you see/feel?
Honestly, I have no idea at this point. I know for a fact that the device will boot faster and read operations on the /system partition will be absolutely insanely fast. As fast as they can possibly be on the Note 3. As far as “end of the day” battery savings, well, this is kind of the point of me doing this and sharing. I am going to find out, and post my results here so other people can decide if they do or don’t want to do this as well. If all goes well, I’ll edit this post tomorrow with some quick instruction on how to convert the file system. It should be a quick and easy process.

Other benefits of using EXT2 instead of EXT4:
EXT2 is backward compatible with EXT4. What this means is you can have a file system formatted to EXT2, and it can be mounted as EXT4 and it will only utilize the newer useful features found in EXT4 that were not originally present when EXT2 was introduced. When mounted as EXT4, EXT2 will not use journaling, but will use EXT4’s superior block allocation and “tagging” feature. EXT4 has the ability to mark unused blocks on the disk so it knows to not look there for data – this saves precious time in read operations. EXT2 does not have this feature… except when it is mounted as EXT4 :)

The biggest advantage, here, is to get rid of that useless EXT4 journaling feature used on our RO /system and save CPU cycles. We use backups.We are a different breed of users, right? We demand performance and push our devices to the limits and somehow manage to maintain a stable and usable system, correct?

YES! So, we’re gonna go ahead and take advantage of this super awesome backward compatibility of EXT2 on the /system partition and get some positive performance index out of it :)



INSTRUCTIONS - convert /system to EXT2

1. Unzip the .zip folder of your ROM of choice.
2. Find /META-INF/com/google/android/updater script.
3. Open the updater-script file in a text editor.

Any lines where you see "EXT4" and "system" in the same line, you need to change that 4 to a 2. Only do this for lines with system and EXT4 in the same line.

4. Save the changes, then zip the ROM back up.
5. Place ROM on your internal SD card, then boot into recovery - YOU MUST BE USING TWRP FOR THIS
6. Once you get into recovery, you will see your TWRP options (there are 8 tiles in recovery) - select the one that says "Advanced"
7. You will now see 6 tiles. On the left side, select the one that says "Terminal Command"
8. At the top you should see a / symbol - this is the directory you are going to begin your session in. You want it to be /
9. On the bottom right of the screen, hit "Select"

This next part is very important. Do not mess up.

When you get to the terminal screen, type this command:

Code:
mke2fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p23

DO NOT continue until you have double checked that the number you punched in is 23! I cannot stress this enough. 23.... 23..... 23..... again that last part is "...mmcblk0p23"

After you have verified the correct partition number 23, hit the GO button on the keyboard to execute the command. It will run for a couple seconds and finish up.

After it finishes reformatting, flash your ROM of choice (the one where you edited any lines). When you are done, boot up.

You are now running an EXT2 file system for your /system partition. Welcome to the thunder dome
 
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JT man

Senior Member
Sep 10, 2007
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Cool, can't wait to try, thanks for this finding

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk
 
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muqali

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Nov 14, 2007
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Why not just create and mount an ext4 filesystem with no journal? There is a reason they made the ext4 driver able to mount ext2,3 filesystems. Aside from journaling, which can be disabled, ext4 and it's driver are generally better.

edit - Didn't mean to quote.
 
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cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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Why not just create and mount an ext4 filesystem with no journal? There is a reason they made the ext4 driver able to mount ext2,3 filesystems. Aside from journaling, which can be disabled, ext4 and it's driver are generally better.

edit - Didn't mean to quote.

The reason is because the op paths in the file system tree (speaking of EXT4) are optimized for the journal. Without the journal the code path is redundant and the journal-optimized block has empty overhead. EXT2's strength is it's simplicity in structure.

Basically what this translates to is EXT4 formatted disk, mounted as EXT4 and with no journal, is not as fast or efficient as EXT2 formatted disk mounted as EXT4.

I am running this set up right now. This thread will be updated soon with instruction on how to convert it.
 

LancerV

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Nov 20, 2007
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Ext4 has quicker read times than Ext2 which too me is going to the biggest perofmance increase.
 
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Morningstar

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Apr 2, 2006
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This sounds interesting, but I think I'll wait to see others' experiences before giving it a go myself. Will be keeping an eye on this thread though.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using XDA Premium 4 mobile app
 
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cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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The only reason EXT4 has faster read times is because of what I just explained - ext4 uses a method of marking unused blocks on a disk, so it doesn't scan them looking for something. EXT2 does not have this feature. However, when an EXT2 formatted disk is mounted as EXT4, it does utilize this feature of EXT4.
 

muqali

Senior Member
Nov 14, 2007
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Unfortunately, Mexico
Do you have any data, your own or third party to back this up? Do you plan on using an ext2 system with the ext4 driver? Or the old ext2 fs driver? As I understand it, the ext4 driver was given the ability to mount 2/3 filesystems for simplicity sake as well as the newer driver being better but I could be mistaken.

edit - The way you explained it in your last post seems to sound like you'll use ext4 driver on an ext2 fs, I was just asking because I wasn't 100% sure.
 
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cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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Do you have any data, your own or third party to back this up? Do you plan on using an ext2 system with the ext4 driver? Or the old ext2 fs driver? As I understand it, the ext4 driver was given the ability to mount 2/3 filesystems for simplicity sake as well as the newer driver being better but I could be mistaken.

edit - The way you explained it in your last post seems to sound like you'll use ext4 driver on an ext2 fs, I was just asking because I wasn't 100% sure.

That was the intention, correct. Using EXT2 formatted /system but mount it as EXT4 - for the reasons I outlined. To effectively remove journaling and not only that, but the redundant overhead of journaling in the fs tree which would still remain if I were to, say, run this command...

Code:
tune2fs -O ^has_journal /dev/block/mmcblk0p23


EDIT** and so far, yes the difference has been noticeable in boot up time - which is a clear indicator of a performance increase. It loads the /system much faster during boot. Battery life has been slightly better as well.
 
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cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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Do you have a video or benchmark showing the differnce?

A benchmark? People actually use those? lol.

My own device before doing this mod booted in about 21 seconds from the off position. After doing this it was 15 seconds. I full booted it 3 times for each EXT4 and EXT2... it was consistently the same.


You don't need a benchmark to understand there is an obvious performance increase there. Battery life has also been a little better today. My usage on a daily basis is consistently the same with no changing variables. 15 hours off the charger and 75% battery with 1 hour and 30 minutes screen on time is what I typically see. Today I was 15 hours off the charger, 81% battery with 1 hour and 30 minutes screen on time.

CPU cycles have been reduced, obviously.

If you wanna give it a go... You won't regret it. Post your results here so we can compare :highfive:
 

LancerV

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Nov 20, 2007
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Nothing wrong with storage benchmarks, hell the best Windows/Linux/Unix storage benchmark is from 2006 and works perfectly. It's pretty much a staple when it comes to setting up Fibre, and 10Gbe SAN's to make sure the throughput you should be getting you are getting and to test various raids in their IO performance along with read/write performance.

So to say lol people still use benchmarks is pretty naive.
 

cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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Nothing wrong with storage benchmarks, hell the best Windows/Linux/Unix storage benchmark is from 2006 and works perfectly. It's pretty much a staple when it comes to setting up Fibre, and 10Gbe SAN's to make sure the throughput you should be getting you are getting and to test various raids in their IO performance along with read/write performance.

So to say lol people still use benchmarks is pretty naive.

I have not seen one benchmark available on the playstore that is even remotely relevant. What a joke it is to see a tech article running a quadrant test comparing two devices using a benchmark... so, if you were talking about one of those - quadrant, antutu, etc... none of these are going to give me an accurate representation of what kind of performance increase or decrease I am seeing for /system because they don't test those partitions. There are more accurate ways to run a performance test on a disk.... but it's quicker for me to just go ahead and reboot the device since, well, I know what I am doing and happen to be doing it on a portion of the disk where a majority of the work by the CPU is coming from accessing this particular partition of the device.

During boot, there is one task being executed and one task only... booting! Any most everything being loaded is coming from where? /system

Naive? I spent time on Google's team as a software engineer a couple years back... I am far from naive. You are just not looking at this from a practical or logical point of view.

I'll give you an analogy before I go to bed so you can better understand:

If your car runs out of gas, and stops running, and somebody gives you a ride home, then somebody else calls you and says "Hey, I just saw your car on the side of the road, saw your post on G+ about running out of gas. Well, I happened to have a gas can with me and put a gallon of gas in it for you. Go pick it up!"

Now you get a lift back to your car, put the key in, and it starts right up. Do you then turn it off and walk to a gas station, get a gas can, walk back, put more gas in it, and drive away? No, you don't. Because you have already obtained a positive result. There is no need for "testing" at that point. You have clearly established a positive result.

Anyways, benchmarks.... can be useful sometimes. But you are mistaken if you think:

A) They will give me anymore information than I know at this point regarding the test method...
B) I am going to be allocating more time and resources to run a "relevant" test on my /system partition
C) I have not already obtained a clear result


Not trying to sound arrogant... but I've been doing this a while. I'll pass on the benchmarking this time around.
 
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JoshBeach

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Dec 19, 2007
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I have not seen one benchmark available on the playstore that is even remotely relevant. What a joke it is to see a tech article running a quadrant test comparing two devices using a benchmark... so, if you were talking about one of those - quadrant, antutu, etc... none of these are going to give me an accurate representation of what kind of performance increase or decrease I am seeing for /system because they don't test those partitions. There are more accurate ways to run a performance test on a disk.... but it's quicker for me to just go ahead and reboot the device since, well, I know what I am doing and happen to be doing it on a portion of the disk where a majority of the work by the CPU is coming from accessing this particular partition of the device.

During boot, there is one task being executed and one task only... booting! Any most everything being loaded is coming from where? /system

Naive? I spent time on Google's team as a software engineer a couple years back... I am far from naive. You are just not looking at this from a practical or logical point of view.

I'll give you an analogy before I go to bed so you can better understand:

If your car runs out of gas, and stops running, and somebody gives you a ride home, then somebody else calls you and says "Hey, I just saw your car on the side of the road, saw your post on G+ about running out of gas. Well, I happened to have a gas can with me and put a gallon of gas in it for you. Go pick it up!"

Now you get a lift back to your car, put the key in, and it starts right up. Do you then turn it off and walk to a gas station, get a gas can, walk back, put more gas in it, and drive away? No, you don't. Because you have already obtained a positive result. There is no need for "testing" at that point. You have clearly established a positive result.

Anyways, benchmarks.... can be useful sometimes. But you are mistaken if you think:

A) They will give me anymore information than I know at this point regarding the test method...
B) Allocating the time and resources to run a relevant test on my /system partition
C) I have not already obtained a clear result


Not trying to sound arrogant... but I've been doing this a while. I'll pass on the benchmarking this time around.

Right on. Great work OP. While EXT2 isnt for everyone. Experienced users can gsin value from using it. Nice Work!!!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 using JellyBombed Tapatalk.
 
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LancerV

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Nov 20, 2007
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My phone takes about 15secs to boot up not sure Im going to really notice a 1-2sec diffrence, a better analogy would be taking a car that does 0-60 in 6secs and a pos looking car and one that does 0-60 in 6.2 secs and be looking like a sports car. The differnce would be so minuscial that if you asked people which one accelerated faster they would naturally pick the one that looks like a sports car because thats how peoples minds are trained to think sportty looking car = quicker.

Its kinda a mental placebo effect, hence why I asking if you had a boot up video seems like that would be proof enough.

Also ran a top command and suprise system is using 1% and its the top command so I dont see where you are coming up with the extreme cpu cycles you say journaling is causing. Not to mention the fact /system is pretty much only called upon boot. Most other times its going to be pulling r/w cycles from /data or /sdcard.
 

cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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My phone takes about 15secs to boot up not sure Im going to really notice a 1-2sec diffrence, a better analogy would be taking a car that does 0-60 in 6secs and a pos looking car and one that does 0-60 in 6.2 secs and be looking like a sports car. The differnce would be so minuscial that if you asked people which one accelerated faster they would naturally pick the one that looks like a sports car because thats how peoples minds are trained to think sportty looking car = quicker.

Its kinda a mental placebo effect, hence why I asking if you had a boot up video seems like that would be proof enough.

Also ran a top command and suprise system is using 1% and its the top command so I dont see where you are coming up with the extreme cpu cycles you say journaling is causing. Not to mention the fact /system is pretty much only called upon boot. Most other times its going to be pulling r/w cycles from /data or /sdcard.

The placebo effect you are speaking of are typically people that don't know what they are doing, and are simply just excited about something.

An example of this would be the 9 out of every 10 posts I see in a ROM thread over the years talking about how much smoother their device is after flashing "xxxxx ROM"... a stop watch is a pretty reliable method for checking boot times, which is what I used for this particular scenario because I knew it would be relevant. Also the fact that my usage is pretty much exactly the same every day is a pretty solid test attribute. Any change in battery life at 15 hours... even if it is 1%... I notice it.

Also, my own personal ROM that I use is entirely odexed. So, nothing is being drawn from /data/dalvik-cache that is a /system/framework or /system/app function. It is noticeably more efficient because the 280+ .odex files are being read from the same location... which is now ext2, and not ext4.

Is this kind of starting to make sense now or am I losing you more?
 
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cun7

Senior Member
Feb 13, 2014
99
310
I am not aware of all the file systems on linux. What happens to the partition if you restore a nandroid backup of the system partition that was converted to ext2 but the backup was ext4? And/or if backup was ext2? Just curious.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

It will write the data to the disk as it should. You can do this without having any issues.

I've never tried restoring an EXT2 backup to an EXT4 formatted disk... So I have no answer for you there. It all kind of depends on exactly how TWRP's backups are created... I think they use .tars ... I'm not sure
 

Hypercore

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Apr 16, 2009
504
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Vancouver
Would this by any chance work on an AOSP/CM/AOKP ROM? I've tried using it with CM and LiquidSmooth but it stops every time after "erasing system" with "script aborted (no error message)".

Nevermind, I found out the issue. I went back into the updater-script and removed this line: "format("ext4", "EMMC", "/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system", "0", "/system");". It flashed perfectly after that (Liquid Smooth AOSP ROM).

Edit: Had an issue with the ROM not booting at first, it hung on the splash screen. What I did was reboot into TWRP, wiped cache and dalvik cache, went into terminal (in advanced) and typed this command: "setenforce 0". After that, type "getenforce" and make sure SELinux is set to Permissive. I'm not sure if the SELinux command helped at all but I did it just in case.
 
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cun7

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Feb 13, 2014
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Would this by any chance work on an AOSP/CM/AOKP ROM? I've tried using it with CM and LiquidSmooth but it stops every time after "erasing system" with "script aborted (no error message)".

Nevermind, I found out the issue. I went back into the updater-script and removed this line: "format("ext4", "EMMC", "/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system", "0", "/system");". It flashed perfectly after that (Liquid Smooth AOSP ROM).

Edit: Had an issue with the ROM not booting at first, it hung on the splash screen. What I did was reboot into TWRP, wiped cache and dalvik cache, went into terminal (in advanced) and typed this command: "setenforce 0". After that, type "getenforce" and make sure SELinux is set to Permissive. I'm not sure if the SELinux command helped at all but I did it just in case.

Code:
"format("ext4", "EMMC", "/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system", "0", "/system");"

Change that 4 to a 2...

Code:
"format("[COLOR="Red"]ext2[/COLOR]", "EMMC", "/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system", "0", "/system");"
 
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    In short, what I will be doing here is mounting the /system partition as file system EXT2. Default is EXT4. The reason for doing this is simple. The /system partition is more of an access database where information is read and never written. The goal here is to remove journaling and not only journaling but the redundancy of the code tree of EXT4 by simply killing the EXT4 journal and leaving it mounted and formatted as EXT4.

    EXT4 – The file system uses a function called journaling. Journaling, in short, is a file system log. What this provides to you as the user is a quick method of recovery if there is ever a system failure: unclean shutdown, file corruption, etc. If there is ever a problem, the journal is called and the data is restored with no issues. The cost of this journaling feature, however, is CPU time/usage. CPU cycles are used to write the journal to the disk.

    EXT2 – This file system does not use journal. No recovery method, etc. So if something is corrupted, there is no way to recover corrupted files/blocks/data.


    What does all of this mean? – Simple. What it means is those of us who are rooted, running a stable ROM/Kernel combo, and using a backup method such as TWRP or CWM, can safely use EXT2 for /system without any worry because all we need to do is make a backup of our /system partition via recovery, tuck it away on our internal SD card and save it for a rainy day - restore it if there is every an unclean shutdown (battery pull, reboot caused by an unstable kernel, etc.).

    What benefits will you see/feel?
    Honestly, I have no idea at this point. I know for a fact that the device will boot faster and read operations on the /system partition will be absolutely insanely fast. As fast as they can possibly be on the Note 3. As far as “end of the day” battery savings, well, this is kind of the point of me doing this and sharing. I am going to find out, and post my results here so other people can decide if they do or don’t want to do this as well. If all goes well, I’ll edit this post tomorrow with some quick instruction on how to convert the file system. It should be a quick and easy process.

    Other benefits of using EXT2 instead of EXT4:
    EXT2 is backward compatible with EXT4. What this means is you can have a file system formatted to EXT2, and it can be mounted as EXT4 and it will only utilize the newer useful features found in EXT4 that were not originally present when EXT2 was introduced. When mounted as EXT4, EXT2 will not use journaling, but will use EXT4’s superior block allocation and “tagging” feature. EXT4 has the ability to mark unused blocks on the disk so it knows to not look there for data – this saves precious time in read operations. EXT2 does not have this feature… except when it is mounted as EXT4 :)

    The biggest advantage, here, is to get rid of that useless EXT4 journaling feature used on our RO /system and save CPU cycles. We use backups.We are a different breed of users, right? We demand performance and push our devices to the limits and somehow manage to maintain a stable and usable system, correct?

    YES! So, we’re gonna go ahead and take advantage of this super awesome backward compatibility of EXT2 on the /system partition and get some positive performance index out of it :)



    INSTRUCTIONS - convert /system to EXT2

    1. Unzip the .zip folder of your ROM of choice.
    2. Find /META-INF/com/google/android/updater script.
    3. Open the updater-script file in a text editor.

    Any lines where you see "EXT4" and "system" in the same line, you need to change that 4 to a 2. Only do this for lines with system and EXT4 in the same line.

    4. Save the changes, then zip the ROM back up.
    5. Place ROM on your internal SD card, then boot into recovery - YOU MUST BE USING TWRP FOR THIS
    6. Once you get into recovery, you will see your TWRP options (there are 8 tiles in recovery) - select the one that says "Advanced"
    7. You will now see 6 tiles. On the left side, select the one that says "Terminal Command"
    8. At the top you should see a / symbol - this is the directory you are going to begin your session in. You want it to be /
    9. On the bottom right of the screen, hit "Select"

    This next part is very important. Do not mess up.

    When you get to the terminal screen, type this command:

    Code:
    mke2fs /dev/block/mmcblk0p23
    
    DO NOT continue until you have double checked that the number you punched in is 23! I cannot stress this enough. 23.... 23..... 23..... again that last part is "...mmcblk0p23"

    After you have verified the correct partition number 23, hit the GO button on the keyboard to execute the command. It will run for a couple seconds and finish up.

    After it finishes reformatting, flash your ROM of choice (the one where you edited any lines). When you are done, boot up.

    You are now running an EXT2 file system for your /system partition. Welcome to the thunder dome
    3
    Why not just create and mount an ext4 filesystem with no journal? There is a reason they made the ext4 driver able to mount ext2,3 filesystems. Aside from journaling, which can be disabled, ext4 and it's driver are generally better.

    edit - Didn't mean to quote.

    The reason is because the op paths in the file system tree (speaking of EXT4) are optimized for the journal. Without the journal the code path is redundant and the journal-optimized block has empty overhead. EXT2's strength is it's simplicity in structure.

    Basically what this translates to is EXT4 formatted disk, mounted as EXT4 and with no journal, is not as fast or efficient as EXT2 formatted disk mounted as EXT4.

    I am running this set up right now. This thread will be updated soon with instruction on how to convert it.
    3
    Nothing wrong with storage benchmarks, hell the best Windows/Linux/Unix storage benchmark is from 2006 and works perfectly. It's pretty much a staple when it comes to setting up Fibre, and 10Gbe SAN's to make sure the throughput you should be getting you are getting and to test various raids in their IO performance along with read/write performance.

    So to say lol people still use benchmarks is pretty naive.

    I have not seen one benchmark available on the playstore that is even remotely relevant. What a joke it is to see a tech article running a quadrant test comparing two devices using a benchmark... so, if you were talking about one of those - quadrant, antutu, etc... none of these are going to give me an accurate representation of what kind of performance increase or decrease I am seeing for /system because they don't test those partitions. There are more accurate ways to run a performance test on a disk.... but it's quicker for me to just go ahead and reboot the device since, well, I know what I am doing and happen to be doing it on a portion of the disk where a majority of the work by the CPU is coming from accessing this particular partition of the device.

    During boot, there is one task being executed and one task only... booting! Any most everything being loaded is coming from where? /system

    Naive? I spent time on Google's team as a software engineer a couple years back... I am far from naive. You are just not looking at this from a practical or logical point of view.

    I'll give you an analogy before I go to bed so you can better understand:

    If your car runs out of gas, and stops running, and somebody gives you a ride home, then somebody else calls you and says "Hey, I just saw your car on the side of the road, saw your post on G+ about running out of gas. Well, I happened to have a gas can with me and put a gallon of gas in it for you. Go pick it up!"

    Now you get a lift back to your car, put the key in, and it starts right up. Do you then turn it off and walk to a gas station, get a gas can, walk back, put more gas in it, and drive away? No, you don't. Because you have already obtained a positive result. There is no need for "testing" at that point. You have clearly established a positive result.

    Anyways, benchmarks.... can be useful sometimes. But you are mistaken if you think:

    A) They will give me anymore information than I know at this point regarding the test method...
    B) I am going to be allocating more time and resources to run a "relevant" test on my /system partition
    C) I have not already obtained a clear result


    Not trying to sound arrogant... but I've been doing this a while. I'll pass on the benchmarking this time around.
    2
    Do you have a video or benchmark showing the differnce?

    A benchmark? People actually use those? lol.

    My own device before doing this mod booted in about 21 seconds from the off position. After doing this it was 15 seconds. I full booted it 3 times for each EXT4 and EXT2... it was consistently the same.


    You don't need a benchmark to understand there is an obvious performance increase there. Battery life has also been a little better today. My usage on a daily basis is consistently the same with no changing variables. 15 hours off the charger and 75% battery with 1 hour and 30 minutes screen on time is what I typically see. Today I was 15 hours off the charger, 81% battery with 1 hour and 30 minutes screen on time.

    CPU cycles have been reduced, obviously.

    If you wanna give it a go... You won't regret it. Post your results here so we can compare :highfive:
    2
    The only reason EXT4 has faster read times is because of what I just explained - ext4 uses a method of marking unused blocks on a disk, so it doesn't scan them looking for something. EXT2 does not have this feature. However, when an EXT2 formatted disk is mounted as EXT4, it does utilize this feature of EXT4.