This is something I've seen coming for awhile but I've got no idea how to avoid it. What do you do when your N900's rootfs (/) runs out of disk space?

I can't believe the phone has such little storage on this partition... only 228MB. If you run out, things screw up fast.

I tried to install PR1.2 last night, and it told me I was out of disk space. Now I have to clean it up. I had 17MB free. I ran `apt-get clean` and now I have 33MB free -- still no good.

The immediate problem I have is that since it ran out of space during an install, my apt-get refuses to do anything without completing the install. For instance, I've tried to apt-get install storageusage as recommended here, but then apt-get says it's going to upgrade 1098 packages and install 24, taking 119MB of space, and that I don't have enough. So firstly, does anybody know how to tell apt-get to forget about the upgrade so I can install normal software? I have tried clean, autoclean, deleting the contents of /var/cache/apt/archives/partial (which was empty).

Secondly, what solutions are available for managing disk usage on /? I don't see how this update (PR1.2) could possibly work, given that even a bare N900 starts out with around 100MB free on /, and this update requires (temporarily) 119MB in /var/cache/apt. How can I possibly free up 119MB?

(In other words, I don't get why this has only happened to me, and not everybody ... there simply doesn't seem to be enough space on any N900 -- am I missing something?)

The only solution I can think of is symlinking /var/cache/apt to another partition, but surely there is an easier way.

And in the long run, how do you keep your / from filling up? I have installed a bunch of apps, but not really that many (maybe 10-15). Again, it seems as though symlinking a directory such as /usr/share to the main MMC partition would fix this. Has anybody had success with this?

I see quite a few posts about full rootfses, with some suggestions (nothing terribly concrete). I will try some of those later.

A good suggestion seems to be running apt-get with the cache in another directory.

Mostly I'd just like to know if there is a solution to my apt-get problem (I want to cancel the upgrade so I can install apps without having to free up 119MB of space.)