maemo.org - Talk - Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

maemo.org - Talk (https://talk.maemo.org/index.php)

- Maemo 5 / Fremantle (https://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=40)

- - Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=65322)

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

when-ever i delete something off of the mmc while connected to mac and unplug it, i do not see those files listed anywhere inside mmc not even hidden but the space were gone what i did was once i dragged and dropped the files from mmc to trash i cleaned the trash and that solved it. i got my lost space back, i do not use ubuntu but you might wanna plug your phone and connect through massstorage and clean your trash(recycle) bin.

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

Maybe you should try a fsck first..

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

Hi Robbie,

So what you are saying is to tarball all the files and copy this tarball to an external hdd (my ubuntu box) then delete he files from the phone to see if it effects the running of the device. if so then restore the files?

That could be horribly wrong and i apologise.

I am assuming these partitions are the main optfs and mirrors of, correct? Im not really that attached to my apps and content, is it possible to as "hassan_badredin" said to just format this whole flash chip (eMMC), or just the OptFS?

Will everything be lost except for the maemo os on the rootfs?

Thank you so much!

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

First, you have two chips:
a OneNAND chip, which contains the 256mb rootfs, and
a eMMC chip, which contains three partitions: a 2GB OptFS(ext2), a 1GB swap partition, and the rest as fat-32(~29GB) which is mounted to MyDocs.

Maemo -requires- both the rootfs and the first two partitions on the eMMC to boot. This is why you can't flash the eMMC without also flashing the rootfs.

In your case, I don't think we need to do that - all we need to do is reformat the MyDocs partition on the eMMC.

I suggest backing up any files you want before doing that, yes, because when you format you will (obviously) lose anything that's left.

edit:
To format it, open up a terminal on your Ubuntu system.
Connect your n900 via USB, and select USB Mass Storage mode.
Now, type "sudo fdisk -l" in your terminal to get a list of disks - The n900/MyDocs partition/drive should be 29.0GB, and be at the bottom of the list. You should see "disk /dev/sdX" right next to the size.
Once we know what partition we are dealing with, we can format it with:
"sudo mkfs.vfat -F32 -s64 /dev/sdX" /dev/sdX being the disk we found earlier.
After doing that, we should have an empty MyDocs partition to work with.

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

if you still can install programs, put StorageSpace on your device and try using it to find what is filling the disk

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbieThe1st (Post 868809)

Robbie, I think we are almost there! I tried the formatting method you suggested. The n900 (main partition on the drive) is /dev/sdh where the whole drive is /dev/sdg1 so I used /dev/sdh.

When I hit: "sudo mkfs.vfat -F32 -s64 /dev/sdh" I get:
mkfs.vfat: /dev/sdh contains a mounted file system.

hmmmmm...

Is it safe to navigate through gnome to the drive, right click and format that way?

Thanks again!

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomw889 (Post 868861)

When I hit: "sudo mkfs.vfat -F32 -s64 /dev/sdh" I get:
mkfs.vfat: /dev/sdh contains a mounted file system.

You shouldn't try to format a mounted partition. umount it before you run mkfs.vfat. Make doubly certain that you are formatting the correct partition - the one that is 29.0 GB (though when I connected in USB mass storage mode I only get 1 partition anyway):

Code:

Disk /dev/sdg: 29.0 GB, 28995223552 bytes

64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 27652 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes

Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Quote:

Is it safe to navigate through gnome to the drive, right click and format that way?

Depends on whether the gui is smart enough to know that it is mounted and to umount it before formatting.

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

Well, even if it doesn't, it won't automatically format a mounted disk - mkfs is -very- careful about that.

Honestly, I'm surprised it was mounted; My KDE-based install lets me know that new devices are ready, but doesn't auto-mount by default(though it is an option).

So yea, unmount it, then try formatting.
If the GUI method doesn't work, "sudo umount /dev/sdX" is the command to use.

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

Do you use a tile based navigation program like mappero? Those tile files are pretty small, usually between 5k and 12k, but because of the fat32 filesystem, each file hogs a 64k cluster. So 1 GB worth of maps can easily occupy 10 GB worth of disk space or more.

I suggest to try emptying your map folder before you wipe the whole partition.

Re: Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition

SOLVED!

I ended up formatting the partition using the ubuntu disk utility. Yes I had to unmount it first through the utility but formatting it as FAT with the name Nokia N900 all seemed okay.

The device now has all its available 27GB free.

Thank you so much to everyone who helped, I have to say I went to the Nokia care center and they had no idea.. haha.