Notices

That's a pity, good luck with that.

If you will need /cities folder again, feel free to ask.

There is a way to load the maps manually:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36939

I don't have Windows or Mac either (Ubuntu here). I'm surprised there isn't already a Python app written in GTK or something already. Doesn't seem like it would be too difficult, but I've never been one to be good at maintaining these kinds of projects.

my question is isnt using map loader and putting the maps manually the same thing? using map loaderalso it does the same thing.

So does N900 really does work offine???

Yes it did until it broke. Of course no voice guidance but it worked offline for browsing maps and written directions. I haven't been able to restore it yet

Well, I'm still in trouble. It wasn't the filesystem, apparently.
After having flashed at least twenty times the emmc, it still refuses to use maps offline. Now I've moved away the whole /home/user/MyDocs/cities branch and the .qf file, and tried to start over by rerunning maps, but the directories are not created again. I'm seeing map tiles get cached under /tmp but of course this disappears when the device is off.

I'm getting pissed off this maps app.
OK, it's a bump
Let me know one thing before I get insane. If you put your n900 offline, no 3g, no wifi, no internet connection, and you start the ovi maps, it asks you if you want to go online, right? You say no; does it draw the map from offline storage or shows a sheepish greenish void screen? Answer please before I eat the n900.

Hey debernardis: It shows the map from the offline storage. It shows the spot that you were last and is trying to get gps signal. Did search work for you? As in searching for POIs like coffee shops near you etc? I get a error when searching in offline mode. Thanks.

Yes I knew that searching needs an open internet connection. OK - so maps must be showed even if offline, as I remind before I had this problem.

OK that's solved.

For some mysterious reason, the nokia-maps binary couldn't find any more its maps.
In Xterm, when I start nokia-maps in any directory other than /home/user/MyDocs now no maps are shown offline, only if I let it start from that directory the offline maps are used.
Apparently, the maps path is hardcoded in the /home/user/MyDocs/.qf file as relative references to the /home/user/MyDocs directory. I tried to include the full path but it wasn't working.
So I wrote a small shell script, changing the directory to /home/user/MyDocs and starting the nokia-maps binary from there. The script works, and offline data are used. From the menu, it still didn't use offline though.
So, I had to change the nokia-maps.desktop file in /usr/share/applications/hildon.
Changing the Exec= field do the shell script was not enough. I also had to hash out the X-Osso-Service=NokiaMaps line.
And now it works also from the menu.

I don't know what happened and why the nokia-maps binary doesn't find the maps directory any more. Maybe I accidentally erased some symlink or config file? Though I apt-get purged and reinstalled all the maps related package with no joy.

I suspect that an adequate symlink could be a better solution, avoiding the need for a shell script. Don't know where to put it

Maybe all this stuff could be useful to some other fellow user who can't open his maps any more...

I have exactly the same problem.
I followed your instructions and i managed to load the maps starting nokia-maps from /MyDocs directory. However, as my experience in Linux is limited, i don't understand how to make it work from the menu.
Please be so kind to give more detailed instructions.
thanks