Thread: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
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mece is offline mece
2010-01-13 , 10:50
Posts: 1,111 | Thanked: 1,985 times | Joined on Aug 2009 @ Åbo, Finland
#1
Here's a simple howto for those suffering from lack of space in rootfs:

The first one is more of a temporary matter, for example to get enough space to install an update, but it's also the fastest and easiest.

1. Disable extras-testing and extras-devel and third party repositories

Simply check the disabled box and save in the Application Manager's catalogues menu. wait for app manger to update the lists.
Of course this only helps if you actually had these repositories enabled.

Disabling extras-testing and extras-devel will (currently) give you an extra 11.5Mb in rootfs

2. Reinstall python

This one is a bit more work, but gives you around 20Mb.
If you installed a python application (for example FM Radio, Quicknote, Witter) before python was optified, you need to reinstall python. This will uninstall your python applications, so you will need to reinstall them after you're done. For this you need rootsh which is in extras.

check that app manger is not running
open xterm
type the following commands:

sudo gainroot
apt-get remove python

This will prompt if you really want to do it and give a list of things that will be removed. It's good to check the list so you know which applications are going to be uninstalled.

then these commands:
apt-get remove python2.5
apt-get remove python-osso
apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean

I think I manually installed python-osso on my device, so that one might just say that it's not installed.

After that is done open application manager and reinstall the python applications. The new optified version of python will be automatically installed with them. Try with FM Radio for example.

Do this instead (Thanks @rewt):
Code:
sudo gainroot
apt-get install pymaemo-optify
apt-get clean
When the program is installed, type df -h in the xterm to see if it worked.
The output should now contain these lines at the end:
Code:
/opt/pymaemo/usr/lib/python2.5
                       2064208    471712   1487640  24% /usr/lib/python2.5
/opt/pymaemo/usr/share/pyshared
                       2064208    471712   1487640  24% /usr/share/pyshared
/opt/pymaemo/usr/lib/pyshared
                       2064208    471712   1487640  24% /usr/lib/pyshared
/opt/pymaemo/usr/share/python-support
                       2064208    471712   1487640  24% /usr/share/python-support
/opt/pymaemo/usr/lib/python-support
                       2064208    471712   1487640  24% /usr/lib/python-support
Scroll up to see rootfs status. It should hopefully have more space now.

3. Moving apt cache to home.

This is a more risky fix that could lead to some problems. However it works for me.

This fix is required to be able to install large programs with apt.

in xterm type these commands:
Code:
sudo gainroot
mv /var/cache/apt /home/user/.apt-cache
ln -s /home/user/.apt-cache /var/cache/apt
This should free up a couple of Mb. It depends on what repositories you have and if you have been using apt.

There's a wiki page with this information too:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space
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Last edited by mece; 2010-01-14 at 12:52.
 

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