Symptoms:

- Maemo Mapper crashes during startup. The launching banner appears and then disappears. Maemo Mapper is not listed in the output of "ps aux".
- The root file system is nearly filled by the crash. Before the crash 59 MB were free. Post-crash free space varies: 2.6 MB after the most recent crash, 1.6 MB and 1.2 MB free after the two previous crashes.
- The system becomes inoperable. I assume that is due to the small amount of amount of space on the root file system. Immediately after a boot, I can open an xterm and check a few things before the system slows to a halt and reboots. I can use "df -k" to find out that the root file system is nearly full, and I can use top to find out that the jffs garbage collector and maemo-launcher take up the most CPU time. Then, the system reboots on its own. I cannot use "du -sk" to find out where the space has been consumed because it never returns (and never really uses any CPU time as shown by top).
- The only method that I have been able to use to recover is to re-flash the 770 and install everything anew.
- I've experienced three such crashes, widely separated in time, meaning that I've gotten a lot of good use out of the mapper between crashes. The first two crashes were with unmodified Maemo Mapper 1.4.7-2. The current crash is with a version that contains modifications that I have made - a version that worked very well on two 12-hr days of driving.
- Each of the three crashed occurred when launching Maemo Mapper immediately after booting the 770.

The dream:

Can I recover by deleting a file during the few minutes after a boot during which I can open an xterm and run a few commands? The question is "What file(s)?" I have been unable to figure out what file(s) to delete. (If only "du -sk" would work!)


What might I have done to cause the crash?
I can only guess. The only thing that I did that was odd before the previous crash was, during the previous Maemo Mapper session, to save the track (12-hr drive) to a file, clear the track, close Maemo Mapper (without turning off "Show Track" in the View menu). Then, I used bash commands to move the saved track file to another directory and turned of the 700. Later, when I booted the 770 and launched Maemo Mapper it crashed. I have no idea whether moving the track file might have caused the mapper to crash while starting.

Any suggestions for recovering without reflashing the 770 would be terrific.

Thanks,

BigFan770