Nope, nothing works. Essentialy, from what i've read, i now have a read only internal flash. Can modify some files probably depends on flash block they reside in. Thought maybe if i could find a writeable init.d file i could erase something on boot. But going by inode values they are all on the same flash block (assuming one equates flash block and inode). Tried lots of files, any used during boot are read only ( all this is done as root).

How i got here was using garnet vm palm. Was having problems installing apps, so increased the ram on the vm to 64Mbytes, from the gui. Didn't realise this was in /home/user/.gvm and It was more space than i had. Somehow the file was created and gvm started using it. That was probably when it all went wrong.

Don't see a way out of this without access to the boot prompt before flash is mounted, serial port on the n800 may give that access but probably a long shot that i have access to the necessary pr-linux boot process.

Risk is that a re-flash will put the device into one of those infinite boot loops, or stall during boot. This may explain what is happening in these cases, flash nit modifiable - can't write image and some writeable system file deleted.

Currently i can us the n800, i'm writting this on it. But it's now a read only device.

I'll wait a bit longer before trying a reflash, sneaking suspicion this is going to be a terminal bug !