If i understand correctly, when the n900 is connected to a pc, it senses that and asks whether to act as mass storage, telling the computer it's a simple flash drive. The vfat partition on /home/user/MyDocs gets un-mounted and presented as that memory
Today, while rummaging for a live cd to rescue a friend's pc (god i hate vista!), i had the idea that good ol' n900 (if i had one) could have a live cd image deployed to that partition (just like making a bootable flash drive), thus becoming a very handy tool for booting a pc into linux
Question: is there any reason this would be a bad idea? I assume that as long as the bootloader on the n900 is configured to ignore it, having another bootable partition than / is not really a problem

I think it would be far more valuable to make the n900 double or triple boot.

1. On system chip for n900 rescue if something goes wrong with OS on internal 32GB chip for whatever reason. Maybe set up relatively small without putting /opt on 32BG chip. See #2

2. Main OS on some partition on 32GB internal chip. Share swap and /home with #1. May be Nokia's latest and greatest maemo or some alternative. Wide open spaces without caring whether or not an app is optified.

3. For triple boot, micro SD card could have same OS version as #1 or #2 for testing new apps without fear of trashing system. Or it could be used to test alternative OS without flashin n900 or losing n900 for daily use purposes. Many micro SD cards will fit in a single CF holder. Almost as good as running virtual machines on the n900.

USB keys are so tiny and so cheap, it seems a waste to me to use an n900 as a rescue disk.

I also plan to limit the number of times I use the n900 USB socket as it may not be robust enough and it is needed for charging.

hopbeat has already done it from an SD card
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBCL50tJIKI

Could you guys check this thread? I'd like you to vote and give some input. These threads are so similar, they may be merged soon anyway...

I had this same idea exactly 48:13 minutes after you, MrGrim.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...921#post421921

More like 48 hours

48 hours, 13 mins.