Problems moving cache

[kitsunisan]

So, after getting root, first thing I did, naturally, was try and move browser/market cache, but I've run into a snag. I came across a thread by Damnitpud listing the move commands, lets take the browser cache as an example:
cd /data/data/com.android.browser/cache
rm -R webviewCache
mkdir /sdcard/cache/webviewCache (if you have already made the cache folder in your microSD)
ln -s /sdcard/webviewCache webviewCache
Pretty straightforward, one would think, but when I get to this step:
cd /data/data/com.android.browser/cache
rm -R webviewCache
I get rm failed for _R, no such file or directory. Don't want to play around with the commands, thought I'd check first here to prevent getting a shiny new brick.
And the market cache failed at the same step, it said permission denied. I was using terminal emulator, since telnet isn't connecting for some reason.

[JohnnyLicious]

yea telnet isnt letting me connect either i don tknow what else to do lol

[kitsunisan]

Found the issue, I think, it was a noobish move, I didn't type in su in terminal emulator, worked after that. I just needed SU status there.
Do have a quick question about it though, does it create a visible folder on the sd card? I went through the steps moving the browser and market cache through terminal emulator, every step went through alright, but no folder shows. How do I know if I got it right?

[JohnnyLicious]

really let me try that then lol.

thanks

[rynosaur]

The instructions for moving the browser cache are faulty on AC. This is the proper symlink command (the last command):

ln -s /sdcard/cache/webviewCache webviewCache

the original AC post omits the "cache" subdirectory that you have to set up in /sdcard, which will lead Android to send your browser cache files to some dark, unknown place Most likely back to device memory, but I dunno.


the "cache" subdirectory contains marketCache, webviewCache, and streetCache . . . you can add app caches to this directory on the sdcard if you like. Others have done it with success.

I improvise and do the browser cache this way, and it actually seems to work better at minimizing the total space Android Browser will ever take in device RAM:

su
cd /data/data/com.android.browser
rm -R cache
ln -s /sdcard/cache cache

so with this method the OS will look to the cache subdirectory and create webviewCache in the sdcard/cache, as far as I can tell this way is simpler and works better, but I'm no linux genius, I could be wrong.

[kitsunisan]

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out in the morning, 1am here ant it's bad to do this stuff bleary eyed.

[JohnnyLicious]

thanks alot i will try it.

[rynosaur]

By the way, you cannot use the "clear cache" button in Android Browser ever again, or your symlink will be destroyed and the browser will start caching in the flash mem again. Using "clear user data" in the applications menu seems to do the same thing. To clear out the sdcard caches periodically, I just cd to each subdirectory and:

rm -R *

Be very careful when/where you issue this command because it will recursively delete every file in the directory you issue this command, and there's no trash can in linux: deleted means deleted. I always issue the "ls" command right before I clear out a directory to make sure I can see exactly what's about to go.

Have fun!

[Mi|enko]

I did this for the browser and market. Worked a treat. Browsed to 2 sites, as well as loaded up the market for a few minutes, and my cache folder grew to 7 megs from 0. While this doesn't seem like much, that's actually quite a bit for the memory on the phone itself (plus I have a 16 gig card).

The only problem I'm having is the TuneWiki one. It says it can't cd it. Any ideas?

[ilasno]

Forgive my ignorance, but can you explain the benefits of moving the app caches to the SD card? Is it anything beyond not using the space on the phone itself? Are the caches that space-consuming?