as far as i understand, icons (like the battery) are not part of a theme correct?

i wanted to be on the save side and just make a new theme and edit everything in that to not overwrite the originals.

No, they're not themed. You can place replacements under /home/user/.local/share/icons instead of /usr/share/icons though, which means you don't have to overwrite the originals (you'll need to duplicate the directory structure as it is under /usr/share/icons).

I have the symbol "general_profil" change in format 32x32 and 48x48 and copied to the N900. The status bar, it is immediately visible, but when I go into the settings and they are still just loaded, I look for a little while, the original image, and only then it is changed with the new.

usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/hildon
usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/hildon

Why is this so and how can I change this?

awesome that worked, thanks.

The N900's OBEX FTP service ("File Transfer Server" bluetooth service in WinXP) by default only gives you access to six directories - the five main document directories ("Documents", "Audio clips", etc.) and MyDocs root (named "Data").

Turns out this is controlled via symlinks in /home/user/.obex-root/, making it ridiculously easy to customize (from a Linux user's standpoint, at least). The sole thing keeping it from being a total walk in the park for anybody and everybody is that the permissions default to being set with no write access for anybody (geek note: octal 550, owned by user.users), so they have to be adjusted first.

So! As an example, here's a novice user tutorial on how to get access to your MicroSD card through Bluetooth with this method:

1. Open an X terminal.
2. Type the following commands:
(This modifies permissions so that we can make this mod.)
(Create the symlink. Don't forget the backslash before that last space!)
OPTIONAL: (Change the permissions back to what they were before. Not strictly necessary, but if you're paranoid like me, you may want to anyways. )

When this is done, the Bluetooth file transfer server will now show a "Memory Card" directory in addition to the usual "Audio Clips", "Video Clips", "Documents", et cetera. In there will be the contents of your memory card.

If you have the Nokia PC Suite installed, this also affects the directories shown in the Nokia Phone Browser - with both Bluetooth and USB connections. That last is particularly nice because it allows you to access filesystems with the "PC Suite mode" USB connection without them having to be unmounted first, as is necessary for "Storage device mode". (The latter is still useful because it's 1) universal to all computers, and 2) an actual filesystem which lets you, say, edit-in-place rather than copy back and forth.)

Finally, you can create symlinks to anywhere in the filesystem and it'll work. Browsing and read/write is done with "user" level privs - i.e. you can't symlink to /etc and thereafter edit config files this way, but you will have read-only access. Also, the service doesn't let you access dotfiles - if they're hidden to "ls", they're inaccessible via this system.

Also, be aware that this constitutes a potential security hole if you're incautious about your Bluetooth pairing habits - see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=48044 for an example. (Pairing with devices you don't 100% trust is always a Bad Idea, no matter what. It's like giving out your password. Don't do it!)

Hope this helps!

Love this thread. Had to flash my N900 due to something eating up my battery. I used the back up and restore function and thought it would restore my mods but that was not the case. Anyway to preserve my mods so don't have to go through this again?

Yes there is.

On the next go around, keep notes!

Can someone help me with my problem. I have no idea why this is so!
Please help me

connect from your pc using ssh and make a copy of everything.
because i did this i was able to 'reinstall' the airport game that's no longer available on the ovi store (or so it was when i last checked)

One people on this thread may have missed: it is possible to make the default web browser's address bar search use more than just google, a la Opera or (I'm told) Firefox.

What to do:

Download this file to your N900, prefereably to the Documents folder.

In XTerminal enter the command

(NB If you saved to a folder other than Documents from the webbrowser MyDocs/.documents will need to be changed to the requisite path)

In the web browser go to the page about:config
Read the "Here be dragons" warning and promise to be careful.

Find the setting keyword.URL by typing key into the filter box at the top of the page. Select the line keyboard.URL by tapping it and press enter.

Put in the dialogue box that appears and tap Done.

Now when you type a search into the address bar you can choose the following search engines by prefixing them with the letters lited below:

go - regular Google search (not mobile!)
wiki - wikipedia
map - Google Maps UK
ebay - eBay UK
php - PHP manual
mysql - MySQL manual
acronym - acronymfinder.com
urban - urbandictionary.com

(eg ebay n900 in the address bar will seach ebay.co.uk for an N900, wheras wiki n900 will search wikpedia)

You can add to or edit the choice of engines by editing search.htm - I would advise using pygtkeditor, which I think any serious modder should have installed unless they like vim or emacs. I, for instance, have edited the line to read which means that instead of typing into the address bar to get a search for foo from the full-fat google.com I type to search google.co.uk.

A further change I have made is to add the lines into the search engine list block of code and before the line This allows you to replicate the bookmarkable search function for UK train journeys on the excellent traintimes.org.uk by typing, for instance
to search for tomorrow's departures from Hitchin to York at around 1000.
The second line of code needs to be added as else between the script and the browser / is replaced with %2F which confuses the website. For more on how to use this look at the traintimes.org.uk frontpage; you can click the iCal links from its search results to get the times entered into your n900 calendar.

Hat-tips to evad for coming up with the idea and Viqsi for the device-side rather than online evolution of the idea in this thread.