How to configure Android's *internal* taskkiller

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ratson

Inactive Recognized Developer
Nov 2, 2009
481
55
andrs.w3pla.net
OnePlus 11
AutoKiller 1.0 is out:
-name changed to AutoKiller, no longer beta
-redesigned ui
-desktop shortcuts to presets (long press on home screen, shortcuts, AutoKiller presets)
-stability and speed improvements

come, check the new home page
 
D

dustintheweb

Senior Member
Feb 27, 2010
133
46
Tulsa
After reading through this thread, the *internal* taskkiller/AutoKiller technique definitely has me drooling!

Unfortunately, as I am currently playing ball on an Eris, I am unable to root, and thus remain unable to configure the lowmemorykiller at runtime or stickify the changes to /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree after a reboot.

But then I kept hearing a little voice asking: "Why can't a script just apply/ re-apply the 6 memory limits, pre-runtime, each time the device reboots?"
(It seems like I read a few people grazed the non-root idea at one point, but didn't see much on follow-up.)

For those in the know, can the above idea be done? If so, and put into the marketplace, I think it could be the holy grail app for the foreseeable future (especially for ARMv7 CPU androids).

It's effective and innovative tweaks like AutoKiller that can help bring some much needed sanity to the razors edge arms race that is modern mobile hardware.
Remember: Only you can reverse Moore's Law! :D
 
Last edited:
B

balazer

Member
Apr 22, 2008
42
3
You can't make that kind of change without root access. All of those settings and locations in the filesystem require root access. The whole point of being root is to have that access.
 
A

across

New member
Mar 2, 2010
2
0
I have a questions. I'm very new at ROOT/ROMING with my HTC Sprint Hero. I'm currently experiencing low internal space and I was trying to follow the steps as to how to save space. But, I was unsuccessful. Can someone please baby step me as to what I need to do to free more internal space. Thank you
 
B

balazer

Member
Apr 22, 2008
42
3
To get more internal storage space, you need a custom ROM that supports apps2sd. Google 'hero custom rom' or something like that. This thread is about something entirely different.
 
L

lsim001

Senior Member
Aug 20, 2004
124
1
London
Auto Memory Manager 1.3 is out

Auto Memory Manager 1.3 is out. So update if you've got an old version OR give it a try if you haven't already done so :)

Version 1.3

* Updated Running Processes page. This is where you will be to access all the new functionality listed below.
* Ability to kill unwanted process. Select the process that you want to kill and then select "Kill" from the options.
* Ability to keep alive process. Select the process that you want to keep alive and then select "Keep Alive" from the options.
* Raise or lower out of memory priority for a process so you can control which processes will get shut down first when memory is low or at a threshold. Select the process that you want to change and then select to increase or decrease the priority from the options.
* Display more details about each process. Select the process and then select "Process Details" from the options.
* Added ad support. This is your chance to support my work.


As usual, if you like it then leave a rating/feedback. Thanks guys.
 
S

samusalo

Senior Member
Mar 12, 2009
361
69
Can't find Auto Memory Manager 1.3 from Market with Behnaam's BeHero 2.1 ROM. Any ideas?
 
O

oldskool73

Member
Jan 27, 2010
42
4
Seems a good time to remind everyone about my MinFreeManager again, an alternative to ratsons AMM.

You can grab it from the marketplace too, it allows you to change the minfree values and nothing else, it simply makes the changes and quits so no running services or extra fluff (after all it's supposed to be freeing memory, not using it) & just takes up a few kb storage space, and is completely free so no ads :)

Just an alternative...

chart

MinFreeManager 1.6
 
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L

lsim001

Senior Member
Aug 20, 2004
124
1
London
jocaferlo said:
Today I can see Auto Memory Manager in Market with BeHero ROM :confused::confused::confused:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Possibly because I was uploading an update around that time. If you go and look now it should be there.

Btw, Auto Memory Manager 1.3.2 is out. Fixed a bug that was causing an FC and did a few minor things. Now that I've got the gremlins out of the system it's time to get the show on the road again.
 
R

ratson

Inactive Recognized Developer
Nov 2, 2009
481
55
andrs.w3pla.net
OnePlus 11
oldskool73 said:
Seems a good time to remind everyone about my MinFreeManager again, an alternative to ratsons AMM.

You can grab it from the marketplace too, it allows you to change the minfree values and nothing else, it simply makes the changes and quits so no running services or extra fluff (after all it's supposed to be freeing memory, not using it) & just takes up a few kb storage space, and is completely free so no ads :)

Just an alternative...

chart

MinFreeManager 1.6
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

just a quick fix: my app is AutoKiller, and doesnt use a service any more to set last value at boot time. ;)

by the way:
AutoKiller 1.2 is out
 
B

balazer

Member
Apr 22, 2008
42
3
It's a mystery to me why you guys are seeing speed-ups by using more aggressive lowmemorykiller settings. I've tried that, and it didn't help.

My biggest complaint about Android has always been the time required to switch between apps. Knowing that Android will leave background apps in memory so long as there is sufficient free memory, I tried these less aggressive settings in AutoKiller:

5,6,7,8,22,24 (MB)
instead of the default
6,8,16,20,22,24

This gives me 12 more MB for background apps, which has made a big difference: now I can fit one or two more big background apps in memory, so that switching between them is a lot faster. That really helps for using the Browser and Opera Mini.


There is really no such thing as optimal lowmemorykiller settings. Performance for any given settings will always be a function of which apps you use and how you use your phone. Everything is a trade-off: Aggressive settings favor the foreground app, though possibly forcing some background apps to unload and reload themselves more often, which impacts the foreground app. Less aggressive settings favor background apps, and speed up app switching.


On a related note, I've started a thread at Howardforums with a lot of info on how to get the memory hogs out of your system. This has sped up my phone more than anything else.

Speed up Android by reducing application memory usage
 
R

ratson

Inactive Recognized Developer
Nov 2, 2009
481
55
andrs.w3pla.net
OnePlus 11
balazer said:
It's a mystery to me why you guys are seeing speed-ups by using more aggressive lowmemorykiller settings. I've tried that, and it didn't help.

My biggest complaint about Android has always been the time required to switch between apps. Knowing that Android will leave background apps in memory so long as there is sufficient free memory, I tried these less aggressive settings in AutoKiller:

5,6,7,8,22,24 (MB)
instead of the default
6,8,16,20,22,24

This gives me 12 more MB for background apps, which has made a big difference: now I can fit one or two more big background apps in memory, so that switching between them is a lot faster. That really helps for using the Browser and Opera Mini.


There is really no such thing as optimal lowmemorykiller settings. Performance for any given settings will always be a function of which apps you use and how you use your phone. Everything is a trade-off: Aggressive settings favor the foreground app, though possibly forcing some background apps to unload and reload themselves more often, which impacts the foreground app. Less aggressive settings favor background apps, and speed up app switching.


On a related note, I've started a thread at Howardforums with a lot of info on how to get the memory hogs out of your system. This has sped up my phone more than anything else.

Speed up Android by reducing application memory usage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse


i agree that there is no "best setting". you shall find the most suitable to your needs.

btw AutoKiller 2.1 is released with much faster process manager
 
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    androcheck
    androcheck
    Hi!

    Note:
    Sorry this posting got very long. But it will tell you how to configure Android's internal taskkiller which may help getting your hero really speedy again.. :) Without using any taskkiller.


    Here the long story:
    I just was curious if already someone tried to play around with Android's internal low-memory task killer.

    We all know that Android uses a different way of handling processes. Instead of killing every process after its Activity ended, processes are kept until the system needs more memory. These processes usually should not harm the overall performance and should give speed improvements if you start an Activity again. That's the idea.

    But when does Android kill a process? And which process? As far as I understood android keeps a LRU (last recently used) list and starts killing the oldest unneeded process. This way it is much smarter than any of the taskkillers we see in the Market.

    Just for curiosity I started to investigate how this mechanism works. Please correct me if you think that I got something wrong:


    What I found out:
    ActivityManagerService.java tracks the "importance" of processes (is foreground, is running a service, ..) and reflects this importance by setting the "oom_adj" value of the process.

    (For info: "oom_adj" is a value of every process under Linux which gives the kernel a hint, which process it can kill in an oom [out of memory] situation. You can see this value on every Linux 2.6 system in the proc directory: /proc/[PID]/oom_adj ). The higher this value is set, the more likely this process gets selected by the kernel's oom killer.)

    It seems that on Android the current forefround application gets an oom_adj value of 0 and as soon it's not visible anymore it gets some higher value. I assume the concrete value is dependent by the processes' place in the LRU list.


    The out-of-memory killer in the standard Linux kernel only runs in one situation: when the available memory is critical low. However in the Android Linux kernel there is implemented a more fine-grained handling of low memory situations.

    I found the kernel source file "lowmemorykiller.c" (located in the kernel source tree under "drivers/misc/"; or look here for GIT source tree: http://tinyurl.com/lowmemkiller).


    This module seems to be more configurable than the kernel's standard out-of-memory killer as you can define more than one memory limit, when it should get active and you can tell it which oom_adj values it may kill.

    In other words:
    You can say "if free memory goes below XXXX then kill some process with oom_adj greater then YYY; if free memory goes even more below than ZZZ then start to kill some processes with oom_adj greater than XYXY. and so on.."

    So it's possible to define multiple memory criterias and matching processes which can be killed in these situations. Android seems to group running processes into 6 different categories (comments taken out of "ActivityManagerServer.java"):
    Code: 
    FOREGROUND_APP:
    // This is the process running the current foreground app.  We'd really
    // rather not kill it! Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

VISIBLE_APP:
    // This is a process only hosting activities that are visible to the
    // user, so we'd prefer they don't disappear. Value set in
    // system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

SECONDARY_SERVER:
    // This is a process holding a secondary server -- killing it will not
    // have much of an impact as far as the user is concerned. Value set in
    // system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

HIDDEN_APP:
    // This is a process only hosting activities that are not visible,
    // so it can be killed without any disruption. Value set in
    // system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.

CONTENT_PROVIDER:
    // This is a process with a content provider that does not have any clients
    // attached to it.  If it did have any clients, its adjustment would be the
    // one for the highest-priority of those processes.

EMPTY_APP:
    // This is a process without anything currently running in it.  Definitely
    // the first to go! Value set in system/rootdir/init.rc on startup.
    // This value is initalized in the constructor, careful when refering to
    // this static variable externally.
    These 6 categories are reflected by 6 memory limits which are configured for the lowmemorykiller in the kernel.

    Fortunately, it is possible to configure the lowmemorykiller at runtime! :)
    (But only if you are root). The configuration is set in the file: "/sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree"

    So if you want to see the current settings, you can do:

    Code: 
    # cat /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree
    This should produce output like this (or similiar):
    Code: 
    1536,2048,4096,5120,5632,6144

    These values are the 6 memory limits on which Anedroid starts to kill processes of one of the 6 categories above. Be careful, the units of these values are pages!! 1 page = 4 kilobyte.

    So the example above says that Anddroid starts killing EMPTY_APP processes if available memory goes below 24MB (=6144*4/1024). And it starts to kill unused CONTENT_PROVIDERs if available memory goes below 22MB (=5632*4/1024).


    So if you want to try if your Hero goes faster when fewer processes are running you can try to adjust these settings. For example if you practically do not want any empty processes you can set the corresponding value very high. For example, you can set the values like this:

    Code: 
    # echo "1536,2048,4096,5120,15360,23040" > /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree

    This example will tell Android to kill unused Content providers if less then 60MB is available and kill empty processes if available memory goes below 90MB.

    All other processes will stay untouched! Do you see the advantage compared to process killers?


    One word about durabilty:
    If you change the settings like this, they are NOT PERMANENT. They will be gone after the next restart of your phone. So you can try to play around a little bit. Please share your results if you find some improvements! :)

    To make this settings survive also reboots you need to somehow set this at startup. I am running Modaco's custom rom and added the command to the startup script /system/init.d/ramzswap.sh, but there may be other ways to do this.

    Currently I also disabled compcache on my Hero and set the lowmemkiller very aggressive, as it seems to me that this makes my hero very responsive.

    So these are my (current) settings:
    Code: 
    echo "1536,3072,4096,21000,23000,25000" > /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/minfree
    (and compcache disabled)

    But play around.. I am glad about any feedback. :)
    Please also give feedback if I am wrong or missed something!

    Thx! :rolleyes:
    View
    4
    H
    hardcore
    btdag said:

    This is a Hero thread and quite a few months old. Also FYI - taskillers are a fallacy. Increasing the amount of free ram will only serve to reduce the number of apps you can run simultaneously it will NOT speed up your phone.
    Click to expand...
    Click to collapse
    These settings could apply to all Android builds, as Android has a built-in task killer for memory management. And no, its not a fallacy (I mean the built-in Android task killer is not a fallacy). It does speed up the phone. The *free* RAM is not unused. Rather it's used by Linux to cache the file system, which does speed things up.

    You can see the real usage by doing:

    # cat /proc/meminfo
    MemTotal: 311340 kB
    MemFree: 3656 kB
    Buffers: 580 kB
    Cached: 92136 kB
    SwapCached: 0 kB
    Active: 194460 kB
    Inactive: 49624 kB
    Active(anon): 154344 kB
    Inactive(anon): 768 kB
    Active(file): 40116 kB
    Inactive(file): 48856 kB
    Unevictable: 2788 kB
    Mlocked: 0 kB
    SwapTotal: 0 kB
    SwapFree: 0 kB
    Dirty: 20 kB
    Writeback: 0 kB
    AnonPages: 154176 kB
    Mapped: 81012 kB
    Shmem: 956 kB
    Slab: 11380 kB
    SReclaimable: 2788 kB
    SUnreclaim: 8592 kB
    KernelStack: 3224 kB
    PageTables: 11800 kB
    NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
    Bounce: 0 kB
    WritebackTmp: 0 kB
    CommitLimit: 155668 kB
    Committed_AS: 6467652 kB
    VmallocTotal: 319488 kB
    VmallocUsed: 93716 kB
    VmallocChunk: 176132 kB

    In this case my Task Manager is reporting almost 100MB free but as you can see, 92MB of that is being used by the OS as cache, and the actual unused RAM is only about 4MB. Linux kernels use most of the "free" RAM for file system caching.
    View
    2
    androcheck
    androcheck
    The difference of this method compared to task killers like "Automatic Task Killer" is that there is no separate application involved.

    There is no widget or taskkiller process which needs to be run.

    Instead you configure the Android kernel itself how to handle processes. While taskkillers need to be run regularly (automatically or by hand) to check memory and kill processes, the way I described this gets done complete automatically by the Android kernel, immediately when available memory goes under the configured limits.

    There is also no need for ignore-lists or something like this, as the Android kernel knows which applications it can kill and which not. Furthermore you can configure much more fine-grained when to kill which processes and the kernel is using the internal "last recently used" list and kills the least needed processes first.

    External task killer only can kill processes "blindly", they cannot see which processes are "empty" (not hosting an Activity) or which have been in the background for the longest time, and so on..


    When people tell you that taskkillers are evil, they mean that taskkillers interfere with Androids process management in a way this was never intended. The way I described you still let Android handling processes itself, but you just tell it to be more restrictive. :)

    So this is far less invasive into the Android system and (should :)) have less side-effects..

    But I'm still learning. I am a programmer who wants to understand things. And fortunately here we have the source to do so.. :cool:
    View
    2
    adwinp
    adwinp
    These values can be directly edited in your initrc
    *APP_ADJ, *APP_MIN_ADJ, *ADJ, *PROVIDER_MEM, *SERVER_MEM and *APP_MEM
    View
    2
    O
    oldskool73
    Seems a good time to remind everyone about my MinFreeManager again, an alternative to ratsons AMM.

    You can grab it from the marketplace too, it allows you to change the minfree values and nothing else, it simply makes the changes and quits so no running services or extra fluff (after all it's supposed to be freeing memory, not using it) & just takes up a few kb storage space, and is completely free so no ads :)

    Just an alternative...

    chart

    MinFreeManager 1.6
    View

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