Since more than a year I didn't do anything on my n900 besides updates.
One of the last updates broke my mobile (I think it had to do with changed partitions).
While it were unable to boot I backupped my files and installed a full, fresh firmware installation.
After this I want to install the updates and CSSU of course.

And now to my problem:
While there are so many updates at once it always broke after the update again.
By now I suppose that it is space related.

Is there anywhere a howto, how to fast install a fresh n900 in a meaningful way?

Or is it:

1. activate the other repositories
2. install pyoptify
3. then try the updates

I broke it a few times now by simply trying to update and thought it would be okay if I doing the meaningful things on the "free up rootfs space"-page in the wiki and simply install the cssu at first, while pyoptify comes as a depency of it.

It is a really strange problem. It even changes when the mobile stopps working: somethings while updating, sometimes the reboot after updating.

Edit:
I have another way how not to do this:
So this is still a fresh installation and

1. I installed the root-package and vim
2. opened terminal
3. searched for the packages with optify in their name (there were 3)
4. installed maemo-optify-runonce and pymaemo-optify them (maemo-optify wasn't installable due to a missing dependency to dpkg-dev if I remember correctly)
5. reboot

There is a font problem since then and no app can be started (see attached images).

Edit2:
Again I flashed the device. I repeated every step again besides the installation of maemo-optify-runonce. Rebooting was possible then so the font problem comes from maemo-optify-runonce. Do not install it (at least the version in the stable repositories - perhaps a newer versions better)! My problem is still how to move on while there is obviously no simple upgrade procedure anymore!?

Edit3:
I managed to upgraded from the standard repositories. rootfs has now 3 MB free space. I am afraid to reboot or install more.
Any suggestions?

It looks like you killed your locale-cache maybe?

I had a similar issue while trying to free rootfs and fixed it by rebuilding the locale-cache, which also decreased the file from over 25mb to about 2 or 3mb.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=41

Sure there is:
http://wiki.maemo.org/CSSU

Trying to reinstall maemo-optify-runonce always gives me a reboot during the installation. It should not be necessary as it is used, as the name suggests, only once, on the first boot after flashing. But strangely, CSSU depends on it so it is not recommended to remove it, at least not before the upgrade to CSSU.

Your missing fonts, icons and most likely sounds and themes too, are - or at least should be - in optfs. So it looks like your optfs is corrupt or missing. Your small root space also suggests that no optification took place, possibly for the same reason (missing or corrupt optfs partition).

When you say you've reflashed, do you mean just root or the MMC ("vanilla") as well? Did it succeed?