I managed to get this rescue os working:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=75369

What should I do with this? I'm not very familiar with linux commands, to be honest, so I don't have a clue

I have also noticed one thing. Previously I thought, that my emmc flash went wrong somehow. Now I have marked, that when starting emmc flash, the usb icon disappears from the upper left corner of the screen. It seems to me, that the n900 actually does try to boot during emmc flash. It gets to the four dots and freezes, as I have described earlier. Previously I thought that the dots were related to the flashing process. But now it looks obvious, that the phone disconnects when the flashing begins, starts up, gets past the nokia screen, and freezes on the four dots screen when the flasher is at [init 20%].

I don't know if this is completely normal, but I found it curious.

I'll try cold flashing and disabling all the possible watchdogs tomorrow, when the phones battery has charged (the rescue os should be able to do that, shouldn't it?)

:Edit Oops, looks like the phone just shut down due to too low battery charge. Too bad I found the charging command 20 seconds after that. Well, I'll have to charge the battery with my friends x6.

Did not read all the posts and assume you have read the wiki and do know, that you should not boot between flashing of eMMC and rootFS?
So maybe this is total BS (and I apologize), but sometimes one does not see the obvious. Maybe its only the -R parameter of the flash command? Use this one only in the (last) flash of rootFS or omit it completely.

Yes, I have tried with and without -R command, but it hasn't helped.

The thing described in my previous post happens when I start flashing emmc (ie. when I plug the phone to the computer or press enter). It doesn't happen between the two flashes, it happens *during* the emmc flash.
It may be normal, though, but I found it strange.

Did you try flashing using another USB port? Another PC?

I had problems flashing EMMC once on my desktop, had to change USB port in order to succeed.

Re cold-flashing - read first couple of pages here on HOWTO, don't forget to remember your HW revision (better write it down somewhere)

@freemangordon or another highly knowledgeable one
Could You also post things he should do using Rescue os:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=75369
...? I think, that after "flash attempt", he should check what's going on eMMC (mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 somewhere inside tmp), but I'm not very experienced with this kind of rescue operations, and I would not like to write instructions, that may be totally wrong.

Of course, trying to flash using different port - and, if that not help - different PC has higher priority than messing inside rescue OS (yet), IMO.

/Estel

Hello,

I am meeting the exactly the same problem. I bought the phone used. There was some trials to see the Nitdroid and MeeGo. After that I cleaned all the apps except gainroot. Decided to flash eMMC image and then the "combined" one.
I have read several times the wiki and some additional explanation. Then I have edited the bin file to enlarge the /home part. It is according to the explanation here (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=35122&page=24). Using Hex editor.
I saved the new bin file. I have put the file in the flasher-3.5 folder with short name RX_51van.bin.
Then started the flashing and it freezes on 20% something and that is all.
See the cmd screen:
"C:\Documents and Settings\Darkice_FS2>cd C:\Program Files\maemo\flasher-3.5

C:\Program Files\maemo\flasher-3.5>flasher-3.5.exe -F RX_51van.bin -f
flasher v2.5.2 (Sep 24 2009)

Image 'mmc', size 255947 kB
Version RX-51_2009SE_10.2010.13-2.VANILLA
Suitable USB device not found, waiting.
USB device found found at bus bus-0, device address \\.\libusb0-0001--0x0421-0x0
105.
Found device RX-51, hardware revision 2101
NOLO version 1.4.14
Version of 'sw-release': RX-51_2009SE_21.2011.38-1_PR_MR0
Booting device into flash mode.
Suitable USB device not found, waiting.
USB device found found at bus bus-0, device address \\.\libusb0-0001--0x0421-0x0
1c8.
Raw data transfer EP found at EP2.
[init 20 % 12288 / 255947 kB 16384 kB/s]"
I have repeated the step several times. But no sucess.
After such unsuccessful flashing Maemo boots in strange stage - no images and texts. I am lucky that I know the steps of booting and what shoul be the questions and buttons.
I start the phone and succeeded to reinstal via Nokia Suite. But if I try to flash the phone the things are repeating the same.
During these trials I have tested all 4 USB ports of tha laptop but nothing changed.
Also I have googled the case and just here I am finding the same problem discussed.
If I am able to find good good instruction for the "cold flash" I will try to make it. During this time I will watch the theme and I someone find what is the cause of the flashing problem it will be nice.

Last 30 minutes I have tried the same thing in Win7x32. My laptop is dualboot WinXPsp3/Win7x32. The situation has repeated. I do believe that it is something with the phone but don't know what. Please, help. Be aware that I am newbie in the linux systems.

I had this "no images and texts" mode some days ago when playing around with the partitions on emmc.
It means the partition /dev/mmcblk0p2 (/home) is not accessible because of failed mount, changed filesystem, deleted files, etc..

I've read about this Hex-Editor approach first time today, and i don't know if it helps, but this was my way to a bigger /home partition.

- Boot into backupmenu and mount EMMC
- Connect to USB PC and repartition with a tool of your choice (me used gparted Ubuntu 11.11)
- reboot and flash combined image or restore backupmenu backup (worked both for me, after shrinking MyDocs /dev/mmcblk0p1 and growing /dev/mmcblk0p2 from 2 to 6 Gb)

Mainly followed parts of this How-to:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Repartitioning_the_flash

Hi,

probably you are correct about the reason. I was trying to repartition the 32G. I needed 8 for apps and rest for MyDocs. I read a lot. I made Excel table to recalculate the blocks for the parts. This was done following the official HowTo-s and some additinal advices from the topics in the forum.
Then finally I created the needed commands and started. But after putting the new table I needed restart. And after this restart the things entered a loop of rebots. I was unable to finish creating the file systems. Here it is the prepared sequence I wanted to run:
"sudo gainroot

echo "unit: sectors
> /dev/mmcblk0p1 : start= 16777217, size= 44048384, Id= c
> /dev/mmcblk0p2 : start= 1, size= 16777216, Id=83
> /dev/mmcblk0p3 : start= 60825664, size= 1572864, Id=82
> /dev/mmcblk0p4 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0" > table

sfdisk --no-reread /dev/mmcblk0 < table

reboot

sudo gainroot

mkfs.ext3 /dev/mmcblk0p2
mkfs.vfat -F32 -n MyDocs /dev/mmcblk0p1
mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /home/user/MyDocs"
Unfortunately I reached just up-to "reboot" and that is all.
It is strange that after I succeded to reinstall via Nokia Suite the apps part was 8G as I wanted.
But I am not sure that all is OK and because of that I decidet to flash with vanilla and then combined. Unfortunately I did not succeed.
Now I will follow your advice and will try again to repartition and do the commands from above. Then I will try to reflash.
I see someone was writting that such a problem with the flashing could be because of broken NOLO boot. But if it is broken would the maemo will boot as it is with my phone after the Nokia reinstall?
Regards

If you write a new partition table and reboot, nothing will be left, so this reboot loop is "normal" behavior.
To execute the mkfs/format commands one possibility would be to flash a temporary rescue system to the ram.

http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Nin101/N900_Rescue_OS
http://wiki.maemo.org/Repartitioning...rom_a_linux_PC
http://wiki.meego.com/ARM/N900/Using_Rescue_Initrd

To get the files back you can use flasher, backupmenu, or PC Suite (I never used it).

I did use gparted and don't did it per hand like you. The advantage is, all files remain untouched as I did only resize the partitions with gparted. It takes some time to shrink/grow, so better only do this with charged battery.

^^^
Agreed. Hex edit method is depreciated, uncertain, and doubtful It' *much* easier and less error-prone, to repartition device using backupmenu and any linuxbox/linux liveCD.

Also, your case isn't exactly same as OP - You actually *can* boot, but Your mmcblk0p2 isn't accessible (as eight correctly stated), probably due to screwed eMMC image being flashed.

Summary - flash regular vanilla eMMC, install backupmenu (or, instead, use Rescue OS - this approach require little more knowledge), using it's 'USB mass storage mode: read&write' connect device to linuxbox/liveCDlinux'ed'box, and repartition device to Your liking (I strongly encourage to prepare 3GB partition for Easy Debian, and another one for TrueCrypt - if You're planning to securely store Your private files).

/Estel