Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Hi all,

I have a serious N900 issue since yesterday. All of a sudden, I was getting memory problems (i.e. not enough memory to launch a website), missing icons on the desktop, and reboot loops.

I reflashed the OS as well as the eMMC per the instructions in the wiki. That seemed to go well, but when I look at the Settings->Memory, sometimes it would not show the 32Gb on-board memory. I cannot access the web at all due to memory errors, and upon further investigation - /home/opt is missing!

I am at a loss as to what to do. It is acting very strange - almost as if it was drunk. I am fearing the worst - that some sort of hardware problem has manifested itself.

So, my questions:

1. is there any way to restore /home/opt ? I installed rootsh, and tried mkdir /home/opt, for which I get "mkdir: cannot create directrory 'opt': Input/output error"

2. I have reflashed the OS and the eMMC about 10 times - still with the same results. Is there anything that I am overlooking.

3. If the eMMC is corrupt (and sometimes, I got that message when looking at settings->Memory), Can the external card slot be used in lieu of the internal card? Some sort of simlink or something?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Sounds to me like the eMMC is corrupt, yes. You may be able to bodge something together to get it to use the external card instead, but it won't be an easy job. Is there any reason you're not just sending the N900 back for repair/replacement?

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

I have a Summit loaner device.... since I did not purchase it, not sure if Nokia would do anything for me, but I'll contact Quim and ask.

I wonder if cloning the OS to the external SD would work? I have not found instructions to do so. It must be possible though, since Mer et al must be using this approach.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Gain root and then run a file system check:

fsck /dev/mmcblk0p2

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

It reports back that:

"fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p2

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains a ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device>"


So, looks like the internal mmc is indeed corrupt.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Probably best now for someone with some better knowledge to step in and take this to the next level for you.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Thanks.

Can I try anything else to isolate if its a hardware problem?

Is it possible to reformat the eMMC? I am not sure if reflashing it per the wiki instructions reformats it. I have done that several times, and I am still getting memory errors, etc.

Is there a 'clone OS to SD Card' method available for the N900 and Maemo 5 that I can try with the external SD card?

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

The eMMC flash does a complete wipe and replace of the content, so if you're still getting errors after that, it definitely looks like a hardware failure.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Thanks for the replies. Unless the N900 can boot from SD into Maemo 5, I think I am SOL. Will contact Nokia about returning it...

:(

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

It should be possible - might be worth starting a new thread asking about that (if you can't find any suitable existing threads). The other issue you'll have is getting the base data (what's in the eMMC firmware image) onto the SD.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Download the eMMC image and flash the N900 with that.

It will fix it.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Did you even read the thread? There's only 1 page, so it's not as though it'd take long. He's already reflashed the eMMC several times and it has not fixed it.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Oh yes, sorry.

Theres no other solution than to return it.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Yes, I have been researching this aspect last night. Seems like fanoush and Stskeeps have succeeded in doing this over here.

I just stumbled across this last night, and haven't had a chance to try it out yet. I am not sure if I will be successful in cloning the root filesystem, since I am not sure if it is also corrupt. I will try it out though.

And yes, I may very well start a new thread on the subject. Thanks again for your replies.

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

OK, I managed to clone the OS to the external SD and boot from there using the guide mentioned in the previous post.

Since I am not sure of the integrity of the existing rootfs, I am not sure if some of the problems I still have are attributable to that. What would be nice is if I could get a pristine rootfs and /home from somewhere and use that instead of cloning the one I have got.

Can I get the rootfs onto an SD card using the flashable image from the nokia repositories?

Some of my problems have been fixed:

1. now have /home/opt (after creating the directory) - could not do this when booting from internal flash
2. Can now browse most of the time while on wifi

And some have not:
1. memory errors (although not as often as previously)
2. 3G not working (new problem I think)

Other observations:

1. Installing applications from the App Mgr causes reboots

I think the N900 has a systemic hardware problem. Too bad - I am finding it difficult to cope without it :(

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

Hi, I also had corrupted eMMC... sent my N900 back to nokia for repair yesterday :-)

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

I came across similar problems, after downloading my mp3s to my phone. As it turns out, I successfully tried to do a fsck on /home, and it returned a ton of errors, but since the file system was mounted, I assumed that was the issue. (I would love to get into single user mode on the phone) None the less, I wanted to move the phone to a brand new factory state, so i downloaded the latest image. (2.8 now available for download), and I downloaded the latest vanilla version of the emmc. I followed the directions on this web page:

http://maemocentral.com/2010/02/05/h...factory-state/

And when I rebooted the phone, I was missing the /home filesystem, and it looked like the OS created /home/users inside of /. So I reflashed the firmware, and still no /home filesystem. Thankfully rootsh would installed, and I became root, and then removed (rm -rf /home) and rebooted the phone. Of course it wouldn't boot, then I reflashed the firmware again. This time /home was there, but I couldn't install firefox, due to a missing /opt directory. /opt was a soft link pointing to /home/opt. So I created /home/opt as root (mkdir /home/opt) and now bigger apps will install.

So to review:

1. download the lastest firmware AND EMMC vanilla image
2. flash the firmware (without the reboot flag)
3. flash the EMMC (with the reboot flag)
4. Check to see if /opt and /home/opt is present

If /home/opt is missing, flash the firmware again, and then install rootsh. As root create /home/opt, and you should be ok.

Once again it would really be nice if, I could put the phone in single user mode, and perform a fsck, if/when the filesystem becomes corrupt. Of course I say that without first looking to see if it's possible

--Wildcardjack

Re: Missing /home/opt and my N900 acts like it's drunk
 

I don't know if this could help you at this stage. I found that the eMMC of my N900 was formatted as vfat rather than ext2. I notice some corruption in it after removing Easy Debian, but I umount && fsck it the problem persist. (I even tried -f option)

Then I remount it and connect to PC with USB as a mass storage, and have Windows performed disk checking (remember to check the full disk scan). In the end it found the lost cluster, fixed it and save it under FOUND.000 (it was in fact a corrupted 2G disk image of Easy Debian).

While it's strange that the Windows disk checking fix the eMMC while fsck couldn't, the problem was solved nevertheless.

This is just my experience and might not applicable to others, but hope this'd help you.