why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

With rootfs only 240MB and home (opt) of 2GB? Some other small things and the rest under MyDocs?

I only have 11MB free on rootfs. (mostly is in usr/lib i believe) also sms and emails are stored in the 2GB partition so that could also become a problem later on.

I am just thinking why is it done this way? Why not only 2 partitions a 5GB root partition so the combined rootfs and home (but increased to 5GB to be sure that there is loads of space for quite some time)

and the rest of the 32GB is then under MyDocs

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

Partitioning is terrible, indeed. You can change some things around but you're stuck with the VFAT partition as some apps will refuse to work without it.

Should have been rootfs 1 GB/ rest 31 GB both ext3 with some sort of translation driver for mounting on lesser OSes (read: windows).

The exact moment there is a fix for apps working without VFAT im partitioning the whole thing to ext3.

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

because rootfs is located in 256mb chip that is integrated to the processor (not 110% sure) and opt is a part of 32gb flash chip.

http://wiki.maemo.org/N900_filesystem
http://wiki.maemo.org/Comparison_Table
http://wiki.maemo.org/Nokia_N900

e: and of course 256mb could have been for example 2048 but I quess there would have been about similar leap to the device price...

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

i personally dont mind that there has to be a VFAT partition that is under MyDocs. I can live with that , but the fragmented linux space could be a bit better.

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

ah.. cant we just ignore the 256MB on the chip then? or is it really faster?

Does the N810 have the same small rootfs problem then as the N900?

I am just thinking out loud here but what if i would symlink the complete /usr dir to the opt? That would clean up pretty much everything as far as i can see.

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

i would propose a better question (for which I couldn't find answer yet - although I've read somewhere, that this matter has been discussed many times already):

Why isn't the root filesystem only used for very basic system stuff (kernel + some failsafe system, which would at least provide busybox, if something went terribly wrong)? And the rest of it - /usr, /var, /home could then be on separate partition (e.g. 4GB), which would be mounted asap during boot...

That way, no /opt-ifying crap would be needed and one would hardly hit no-disk-space error...

Only using / for basic system (could fit even into a 64MB partition, easily), and /usr for all the other stuff is quite standard way to do things on "desktop linux" - and it's very scalable too...

Is there any relevant discussion in this forum - or did the discussion only take place in Nokia (or at maemo summit)?

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

I saw someone do that => bricked n900 (=reflash needed) ... maybe the boot process uses some stuff from /usr (which is quite nasty, IMO)?

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

I have it set that... also search for repartition around here.. Theres 3-4 proposed solutions. I'm using one of them. And atm my device is repartitioned in such a way:

/ - 265mb
/usr - 5gb ext2
/home - whatever is left ext2
/opt - 2gb ext2
/home/user/MyDocs - 2gb vfat

Have fun.

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

No it's worse on N810, because rootfs is the same size, AND it's the only posix-compliant space available.

The situation on N900 is better, since we've got 2gigs+256megs of space. If only developers would make their programs install to the 2 gig space instead of the 256 meg space..

Re: why is the n900 partitioned like it is?
 

these things aren't done from scratch. UI was the only thing to go through that. (+3g of course), rest is a heritage from older devices.

and there is no possibility that you would know all limitations concerning this issue.

as allready mentioned, with OS2008 things were a hell lot worse. filesystem now as it is, is more than enough for basic usage. if you are power user, be my guest and hack yourself such a fs you want to yourself.