Mystery space taken up on MAIN (Not rootfs) Partition
 

Hi There,

I have a weird issue with my N900.. I did search and found a lot of threads however from what I can tell are about a different issue.

The other day I tried to upload a largeish (10gb) amount of music onto my N900 and to my understanding I had heaps of space left on the main partition (32gb). Ubuntu told me there was not enough space left on the device for this amount of data.. On closer inspection there is something weird happening. When I view the devices properties it says:

Contents: 2,563 items, totalling 5.6 GB

Free Space: 3.9 GB

23.1 GB used

3.9 GB free

This is the same when viewed on the device through settings..

To my understanding this is not a rootfs issue, my root fs is 66% full at one hundred and something mbs. I did have extra repositories setup but have since disabled them.

In the terminal I have gone through and check the folder size of all the main file-system folders, nothing showed anything over 1gb..

I am really confused. :eek:

Could anybody shine some light on this for me?

Thanks in advance!! :p

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

You could try something like:
To show you the disk usage of all directories under ./MyDocs/, sorted by size (smallest first)...

Maybe that will track down the missing space.

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

Hey Jedi

Thanks for that, I gave that a shot and all it showed up at the bottom of the list was existing music folders and maps.

I decided to give deleting all the existing music a shot to see what it would effect and BIG PROBLEM. the contents of the main partition have gone down to 470.7 mbs understandably but the free space has stayed at 3.9GB.... oh crap..

Any Suggestions?

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

Format eMMC...

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

No, it's all in the hidden folders, most likely.
try "ls -al" in xterm after cding to mydocs.

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

You can scroll up a bit and see the other files/dirs!

Alternatively you could add "|more" to the end to make it stop at the end of each page, but it might take quite a while to see all the files/dirs (press CTRL-C to stop)...
so instead you could add 'r' to the sort command to reverse it...
By the way, this will show you 'hidden' files (those starting with a '.')

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

Hi again,

Thanks for your help, much appreciated.

Okay so I've tried locating the issue using the suggested methods. unfortunately they point to small files.

What I did do though was take a copy of the stuff i needed such as images and contacts and then "clear device" through the settings top bar menu. This obviously restored most of the factory defaults and rebooted the device. When it was up and running again I checked the memory again and it has now jumped to 9.11GB! weird because this made a difference but not enough...

I have noticed something however, when i run "df" or "df -h" to make it easier to read i notice that there is the normal list other users post and then a series (8) of other individual directories or mounts that each total 2gb therefore totaling 16gb! i think the missing space is here each directory seems to have exactly 219.1mb in it. I am assuming they are all just mirrors of each other?

I cant post screenshots atm because my internet has gone over the limit haha but an example of one would be:

/dev/mmcb1k0p2
Size: 20g Used: 219.1m Available: 1.7g Mount: /home

and another:

/opt/pymaemo/usr/lib/python-support
Size: 20g Used: 219.1m Available: 1.7g Mount: /usr/lib/python-support

what do I do?

Could I delete these directories, or will they effect the system?

Sorry I'm a bit of a newbie. But the good thing is we've located the space.. well partitions taking up the space?

Thanks Again!

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

Those are all part of the OptFS, a second 2gb partition on your eMMC - NOT accessable via USB. It's where your programs go.
You should be using "du -h" instead of df -h - du gives you a directory listing, df gives you a listing of disks.

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

Hi Robbie,

Thanks for the tip. I gave it a shot woth "du -h" and looked through the list. nothing seemed big at all. the biggest files were the ovi maps ones at 400ish mb and there was only one or two.

Then I gave "du -ch" a shot to give it a total at the bottom as yeah all that total comes to is 595.8MB... not the 15 odd GBs im looking for..

Same when I do "du -ach" to show/include hidden files..

Very confusing, any suggestions?

Thanks again!

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

Use tar to archive it all with the "pcf" options(google for 'man tar' for full usage, copy it off, re-format, then extract your files again.

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
 

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
 

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):

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.

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

can anyone help me please . i updated my nokia N900 with latest firmware released , but when i copy my video files from my laptop to my phone back , some of files got corrupted and become read only , now i am not able to delete those files , please help me to delete those files as they occupy very heavy memory. Thank you very much

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

try while u are in the directory..or,

to avoid you from being unsure, in the directory, type "ls -l" to confirm that the file is there

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

Don't use the -r option unless you know what you are doing!

And, actually, you should connect your n900 to your PC, place it in USB Mass Storage mode, and run checkdisk(chkdsk) on it - Google if you don't know how.

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

u can use filebox with root enabled to delete read only files from your n900 just in case if you want to delete through n900 only.

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

Dear Raaj when i try to select folder in filebox which i want to delete , filebox got hanged. Please tell me what to do? Thanks a lot

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

some one please help me.

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

Sounds like you have a corrupt file system. You might want to think about re-flashing or at least running fsck (file system check). See the posts above, and elsewhere on this forum.

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

re flashing is not sorting my problem too or i have to reflash emmc also? please help me i will be very thankful to all of you . whenever i click on this corrupt folder my computer hanged always.

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

thanks robbie brother chkdsk solved my problem. thanks a ton brother.

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

Sorry for bringing this back up, I'm experiencing the same thing, i.e. I'm using 6.1gb of space on MyDocs but only 9gb is free.
I do have my MyDocs partitioned to 22gb to allow for extra home space, but I'm still missing 7gb.

My question is, how would I go about taring MyDocs and to which location? Would it be

Thanks

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

df -h says I'm using 12gb on MyDocs but the total size of everything including hidden files is about 6gb.

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

Storage usage is showing 9gb free but when I click on MyDocs it gives me the total size at 6.1bg.
Conky shows the exact same thing, as does windows explorer from 7 and nautilus from ubuntu.