Whats the damn story with this tiny problematic RootFS!?!?

My phone has hardly been used and the rootfs has 4mb of so left.
I uninstalled just about everything and tried apt-get clean and in the end I had 10.8mb left..

Why is it so small? Can it be enlarged and why would Nokia use such a small rootfs? There is PLENTY of space on the N900..

Please help, I'm new to linux and I don't understand how this can cause my phone to not even work when it fills up.

It became full once before for no reason so I decided to format the emmc and reflash.. I do not want to do it again.. Seems like a REALLY terrible design.

Why do programs install to rootfs?
I have been reading about installing .deb packages on here and they can fill the rootfs very fast... I don't understand this part of linux.. Sorry.

Also, I'm sure after I had uninstalled everything, the only extras-devel I have installed are: Power Kernel and Maemo Python (which I think I uninstalled, too).

It is mostly fixed in a firmware update hopefully due soon. There are tips for giving yourself more rootfs in the Wiki.

It is indeed a pretty crappy limitation (256MB), but there are things you can do to have room for as many applications as you want, namely moving things out of rootfs. There are scripts which can do this for you.

See: http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space

Download and run this script, as it safely frees up rootfs space and shows how much it has freed: http://wiki.maemo.org/User:Tanner#Sa...pace_on_rootfs

if you are installing stuff from testing or devel, it will take your rootfs space.

simple way to avoid that: dont install anything from testing or devel.

but even some apps from extras take away space from rootfs, which is something i dont unterstand. so there is no real way of telling if a program will do that. the authors of the apps dont seem to care too much.

extras devel repo is bad news unless you are an advanced user and want to go cleanin out crap manually after uninstalls and most of it isnt optified but dont worry. .

the easiest thing you can do is complete reflash.... see below.

Remember to bacl up data etc. there are other options available to try but im tired (a search may yield info)

http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/...ata/m-p/591877

I'm of no help on this - all apps should have been optified by now - however the complaints of rootfs takes me back to the days when we had to make everything run in the first 640k in DOS.

I truly think a part of my soul died back then...

ah looks like others already replied whilst i was typing lol.... use my method for back to factory reset but see if the other tips help free up enough space....

p.s you should have appx 73mb rootfs free after a complete wipe.

stay away from extrasdevel and you wont get any rootfs issues as the apps are all optified

My impression is that the programs in extras-devel ARE mostly optified, based on my use and looking at rootfs after each installation.

But the limitation is so severe it eventually catches up with an enthuastic installer anyway.

The Wiki rootfs doc plus PR1.2 when it is available should give lots more rootfs.

My tip is after every install check the rootfs space. If an app takes too much uninstall it and hope that it will be someday optified. In the meantime here are a few tips: http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space

Thanks for all the replies..
I went and done some of the things on "Free up rootfs space" wiki and yes, I'm left with 10mb.
Very silly limitation. Does anyone know what the increase will be when 1.2 is out (or on the Beta copy)?

I'm not even sure why you would have programs running from there.. Seem's very weird. I thought that rootfs is a firmware partition. Like iPhone's firmware partition.