Hi all,

I have a serious N900 issue since yesterday. All of a sudden, I was getting memory problems (i.e. not enough memory to launch a website), missing icons on the desktop, and reboot loops.

I reflashed the OS as well as the eMMC per the instructions in the wiki. That seemed to go well, but when I look at the Settings->Memory, sometimes it would not show the 32Gb on-board memory. I cannot access the web at all due to memory errors, and upon further investigation - /home/opt is missing!

I am at a loss as to what to do. It is acting very strange - almost as if it was drunk. I am fearing the worst - that some sort of hardware problem has manifested itself.

So, my questions:

1. is there any way to restore /home/opt ? I installed rootsh, and tried mkdir /home/opt, for which I get "mkdir: cannot create directrory 'opt': Input/output error"

2. I have reflashed the OS and the eMMC about 10 times - still with the same results. Is there anything that I am overlooking.

3. If the eMMC is corrupt (and sometimes, I got that message when looking at settings->Memory), Can the external card slot be used in lieu of the internal card? Some sort of simlink or something?

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Sounds to me like the eMMC is corrupt, yes. You may be able to bodge something together to get it to use the external card instead, but it won't be an easy job. Is there any reason you're not just sending the N900 back for repair/replacement?

I have a Summit loaner device.... since I did not purchase it, not sure if Nokia would do anything for me, but I'll contact Quim and ask.

I wonder if cloning the OS to the external SD would work? I have not found instructions to do so. It must be possible though, since Mer et al must be using this approach.

Gain root and then run a file system check:

fsck /dev/mmcblk0p2

It reports back that:

"fsck.ext2: No such file or directory while trying to open /dev/mmcblk0p2

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains a ext2 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock: e2fsck -b 8193 <device>"


So, looks like the internal mmc is indeed corrupt.

Probably best now for someone with some better knowledge to step in and take this to the next level for you.

Thanks.

Can I try anything else to isolate if its a hardware problem?

Is it possible to reformat the eMMC? I am not sure if reflashing it per the wiki instructions reformats it. I have done that several times, and I am still getting memory errors, etc.

Is there a 'clone OS to SD Card' method available for the N900 and Maemo 5 that I can try with the external SD card?

The eMMC flash does a complete wipe and replace of the content, so if you're still getting errors after that, it definitely looks like a hardware failure.

Thanks for the replies. Unless the N900 can boot from SD into Maemo 5, I think I am SOL. Will contact Nokia about returning it...

It should be possible - might be worth starting a new thread asking about that (if you can't find any suitable existing threads). The other issue you'll have is getting the base data (what's in the eMMC firmware image) onto the SD.