N900 - Issues surrounding full root partition (No space left on device)
 

I noticed yesterday that the Application Manager complained of memory being full. that was followed by a lot of 'Operation Failed' messages.

'df' showed that the root partition was at 100%. So I quickly removed a bunch of applications and was able to bring it down 88%.

This is worrisome because I have been using this for only 2 weeks and now have only a small number of apps installed. I am afraid this will hit 100% very quickly again. Is it due to apps not optimized to install correctly in /opt? many apps it seems have files both in / and /opt. How will it possible to manage the small amount space in '/'?

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

I have to confirm this, I also had the same exact problem yesterday. I have about 20 apps installed, paying close attention that they are optified. I had a "memory full, can't send/receive messeges, free up some space" messege popping up in the form a nagging hildon banner, which was entirely unhelpful for 99% of the users, because the Memory applet does not show the root 256MB partition, I have plenty of space left on the other ones. Now, we all know that a full root partition in Linux is a very ugly situation, you can't even remove apps, because there is no space for the lock file, so apt-get is unusable. So, App Manager fails to do anything (without informing the user what the problem might be, it's just empty) and you're back at the terminal, removing files by hand (if you had rootsh installed, otherwise you're screwed). Knowing how Debian packaging works (you have absolutely no way of knowing how much space will a package take up after installation in /opt and how much in /, just the sum of both) , I have no idea how to resolve this situation other than making the root partition much larger.

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

I have a feeling that this is going to be one hell of a problem, unless this is the main cause for the current delay and they are seriously thinking further solutions. The optification of packages seems not to be enough?

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

Is it possible to resize the partitions?

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

The rootfs resides on different physical memory, so it is limited by hardware. Wonder how much slower would it be to have the rootfs on the 32GB storage device... I haven't seen any actual comparison. Is hdparm available on the device? Can it be used to make a (reliable) speed comparison of the different flash memories?

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

This happens most probably because you are installing applications from extras-devel that haven't gone through the process of using the internal memory card to install files.

If you stick to Nokia and Extras repositories then you will get software that has gone through a QA check testing (among other things) that the files installed take as little as possible from the root partition.

I believe we need a explanatory wiki page somewhere to point users in the same situation because the questions is coming quite often. Please don't install software from extras-devel unless you know what you are doing.

See the technical explanation at http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...opt_and_MyDocs

PS: can you please share the thicker apps you had installed to see where we should put our attention first? Feel free filing bugs asking them to use /opt and MyDocs as much as possible as explained in the link above.

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

I have absolutely no insider knowledge, but I think that it would be one of the top bugs to fix before launch. If the average user could through normal use easily get their device into a state where it was unusable as described, and the only solution is to flash it (again, this is the average user, not the one who downloads rootsh first), Nokia would catch a lot of flack.

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

How are you checking they are optified? What are the apps?

What are you doing with your device (not meant sarcastically)? Lots of email? Lots of application catalogues? Have you used apt-get directly (in which case /var/cache/apt could be a problem)?

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

The trouble is that without fundamentally redesigning the OS structure (e.g. swap on 256MB flash and rootfs on eMMC) - which has both time, performance, tooling and QA implications - the only solution is to make sure stuff installs into /opt.

Re: N900 root partition at 88%
 

For "optized" packages :

Try this :

mv /opt /home/user/soft
ln -s /home/user/soft /opt

You should have now 2GB for /opt

Else try this :

mv /opt /home/user/MyDocs/soft
ln -s /home/user/MyDocs/soft /opt

You should have now 27GB for /opt