Okay, I have gotten sick of this not being able to change desktop backgrounds and being unable to use 3200x480 images as backgrounds. So I have decided to go ahead and reflash my device. I have a couple of questions before I commit to the flash, I am trying to preserve my data and make it so that I can recover back to my current state as quickly as possible.

So I have done the following:

• dpkg --get-selections to preserve the package list
• tar /home/user (less MyDocs/.sounds and MyDocs/.videos)

So at this point, I have but a couple of questions.

1. Is there a way to dump the list of packages from the app manager, since the list differs between dpkg -l and the contents of the app manager?
2. Given the problem that I am having, is it recommended to just flash the ROM image or should I also flash the EMMC as well?
3. Any other recommendations?

I haven't flashed a Nokia device since my N810, and that was over 2 years ago, so I'm trying to take it slow and easy and get recommendations from the community.

Thanks all,
--vr

1.
The builtin backup application makes a list from your
installed application. After reflash, just restore from
backup and the appmanager downloads and installs your
applications.

2.
Start with reflashing the rootfs only. If this does not help reflash
emmc.

nicolai

You may use BackupMenu to create a image of your Device. Just in case.

Okay. I wanted to cherry pick apps, but I guess I can do that from the package list I generated through dpkg. This time I'll keep better notes and see if I can isolate what the problem is/was...

My plan exactly. But as I was trying to tar up the home directory, I found that many, many apps write to hidden directory under /home/user. So I was thinking something under one of those might be the problem...But since I don't have an exact date when the problem occurred, I can't see what was installed around that time or what changes I made.

One of the changes I will probably make is to set up logging. It appears sysklogd is available on the N900 (I would prefer rsyslog or even syslog-ng), so I may set up logging. I'll see what others have done.

Thanks,
--vr

Ok, syslogd was another idea had in mind, but I didn't know if you
would want to try it. The best thing would be to
install syslogd now and try again to change the background image.
Maybe we can see than what's the problem.

nicolai

I'll give it a try once I get to work. I'm fine with syslog...I've been doing Linux (especially Debian) for a while.

However, I don't think that syslog will be able to detect the problem. If I could figure out what is getting called by the desktop menu when you press the change background button. Then I could run it in some kind of debugging mode (e.g. strace, strings, etc.)

--vr

The point is, all warnings from gtk applications are logged in the syslog.
So, if there are some problems with unparsable desktop files or
not readable image files, you have a good chance to see what is wrong.

nicolai

The restore process lets you chery pick the apps you want.

EDIT: You can, after you restored, go into the App manager and restore other apps that you may not have restored first time round.