Ok, after many pitfalls and my own personal Linux ignorance, I think I'm on my way here...

I had to really dig for this information, I think it should be added into the first post in this thread since it is VERY relevant:

Where the directions say "insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/current/ext2.ko" I had to do the following:

a. insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.18-omap1/mbcache.ko
b. insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.18-omap1/ext2.ko

I screwed up and used the BusyBox tar instead of GNU tar. I got all the way through the copying of my almost full flash and got the reboot cycle, The GNU tar seems to be working better since the paths are in some cases two full terminal lines long.

I would never have done this if there wasn't an SSH client available! I love the N800, it's a great little piece of hardware - but it is miserable for text entry!

I made a swap partition when I did my SD card partitioning - is there a procedure to use that instead of the FAT partition? I sacrificed the size of the FAT volume (512) for my ext2 partition (the balance of 2 gb) and figured it would be good to use a swap partition instead of a swap file.

It's nice to see 826 megs free. Plus, it seems that Flash Video runs faster!