Rootfs is compressed and thus not immediately flushed. Reboot before taking measurements.

Increases in messages, calls, etc, got logged. Files change dynamically.
Repositories grow. (Yes I read). Just saying.

Several apps that seem very small depend on libraries that hare huge. For example, Google Latitude is 6M, but it pulls libqt4-network that's 21M and not optified apparently.

Rootfs varies, sometimes as much as 10 MB depending on repos, boot, upgrading packages, etc.

I, e.g., have some 30 MB left, with ABI installed.

I warmly recommend you install Storage Usage and scan packages. It shows you per-app usage, red for non-optified, green for optified.

Well, I have 68% - 70% used for my rootfs.

Yup, I haven't bothered looking because I restart often enough, but any idea on frequency? pdflush handles this - no?

Ah, that never occurred to me (um, don't ask why - I'm a slow learner). Though, since text from all of this combined shouldn't be that much and compresses extremely well, seems like it should be rather trivial. Though, I'll check a couple things out because of this (e.g. delete a couple IMAP accounts that have have over a thousand messages each (not all inbox though), test how storage is handled (just headers or full messages - haven't bothered to try/look/notice what happens in offline mode and I rarely bother - well, can - open attachments on it). Interesting...

Hell yeah! Great idea. Been farting around with ps / dpkg. Like I said, I'm a slow learner.

Thanks.

@radiowc - thanks, but did you have a point besides just saying what you have? I don't follow why you posted that nor would anyone else. BUT, we'd all (well, at least I) love to know context. This sounds like a fresh flash with nothing installed. I've flashed this bugger A LOT since November (as I imagine most have done plenty also) and that's about where I end up too after re-flashing. Based on a couple months I've been using this and research I've done, I think everyone would be interested what you've done to keep it this low if you're going to say "I've had it for 2-months, installed some apps and use it a lot" - a quick list would help a lot of people (with any disclaimers next to each what issues you've run into).

Even better is if you or someone out there can tell me they symlinked off a bunch of stuff under /usr/* to /home and were able to use OTA SSU without problem. That's been the biggest question about doing this (that I've noticed) - well, that and deleting certain files that you don't need or use. Apparently, SSU checks before updates and I want to keep this in a fairly stable mode and able to get OTA updates rather than set aside a few hours to re-flash and re-setup everything just the way I like it.

Just stumbled across this: http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space

optifying python brought it down 3%.

Sorry, optifying python didn't even bring it down .1MB - was ssh'd in and looked at the wrong df -h when I scrolled up.

I asked the same question some time back. The N900 came from Nokia, with 68% full, i.e., about 71 MB space left of 227.88 MB rootfs on 1.2009.42-1

bun

Wiki suggested 100 but it seemed a bit odd to me.

I had 45M when flashing to .51, and I have uninstalled few of my apps. I still had like 15 or so. Space peaked at over 50 right before flash, so I'm guessing along the lines of 60? Maybe more if a good scrub is applied.

But it could be more. Localization, optifying some rarely used components, moving Python off, relocating caches, renouncing the boot video, etc.

Thanks guys. I got distracted, but now looking for more - more is always better...

I'm crawling through Storage Usage (thanks again - this is an excellent app) having scanned packages. I'm doing some research on some of the packages (still a fairly wide hole on info for some of these).

Right now, focusing on low hanging fruit that shouldn't cause any [obvious] problems. Just found a quick way to return ~2MB is apt-get remove chinese-font and rm -r arabic under /usr/share/fonts (under ndi's category of localization). Couldn't find a separate arabic package so just worked on assumption it's part of base fonts included, but if someone has info on it other than that, let us know.

I quickly remove that friggin annoying boot video on every Nokia device - nothing like restarting your phone in a meeting that is boring as watching FoodTV when suddenly that thing blares out louder than I can get my speaker phone to play at then everyone turning around looking at my 'oh crap' look. WTH can't they at least mute the damn thing at least if you have it in silent mode? Might make a few customers happier.

I'm keeping a list of what I'm doing with notes on packages. I'll let it stew for a couple days then post.

With PR 1.0.1 it was possible to partially repartition the N900 by copying the /usr-dir to another partition and mount the folder over the NAND-rootfs one. Booting is a few seconds more and the eMMC is just a bit slower when accessing many files at the same time...

I have also been moving things to opt and symlinking them. I have found that it is best to create a directory in opt and mirror the root off that with the things you plan on moving. This in itself documents what was moved to where. I use /opt/reclaim to do this:

Thing I have symlinked to /opt to save up on root space without issue:



/usr/share/hildon-welcome/media -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/hildon-welcome/media
1.4MB

/var/lib/apt -> /opt/reclaim/var/lib/apt - 14MB if you have extras-devel enabled
/var/lib/dpkg -> /opt/reclaim/var/lib/dpkg - 3MB

/usr/share/sounds -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/sounds - 3MB

/usr/share/fonts/chinese -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/fonts/chinese - 2MB
/usr/share/fonts/arabic -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/fonts/arabic - 1MB