Hello

I think I need some help sorting this out. After routine reboot (no new programs installed after previous one) my N900 lost its wallpaper, reseted its sound settings (touch sound, levels, etc) and put OVI and Google widgets on homescreen. After 10-20 seconds the usr/sbin/browserd -s xxxx -n RTComMess.... line in Htop starts showing up using 100% and then disappears and appears again. Even if I change settings and remove the widgets from home screen, they reappear after reboot.

I tried Killall browserd and browser, but no help. I tried killall rtcom-messaging-ui, but it tries to restart it and gives yellow banner unable to perform operation and the internal error application closes. The converstation app is empty and I cant find my messages from there. I tries reinstalling rt-com-messaging-ui, osso-browser, libpng and KP52 with apt-get succesfully, but they didn't have any effect. I noticed one time that after reboot there was fsck running in Htop before the crashloop, but I didn't see wich partition it was checking. I scanned MyDocs partition with fsck, but there was no help (some unused clusters recovered). Microb loads up normally, but don't load any webpages. Internet connectivity is there, as I can download stuff with apt-get.

This sound like a reflash time, but I still haven't had the time to resolder my usb-port so it's out of the question at the time. Do you guys think you could help. I tried to install sp-rich-core, but I think it is in devel repo, because my apt-get didn't find it. Could it be usefull in this situation?

In my opinion, it's clear sign, that fsck tried to repair your filesystem, and resulted in trashing it completely. Unfortunately, most fsck repair techniques doesn't work on flash, so everything above simple (from) journal recovery, bring risk of making horrible mess. In addition, N900 e2fsprogs is ancient, and tends to segfault at later stage of "recovery"

For this sole reason, I disabled every thing that could result in automatic fsck, inside startup scripts. I've also been advocating updating e2fsprogs in CSSU for ages, until I lost contact with CSSU maintainership, due to their politic (lately, I noticed post by CSSU dev freemangordon, claiming that they aim to update e2fsprogs, after all, in one of upcoming CSSU releases). I still doesn't guarantee, that fsck won't trash your filesystem, but at least it won't left it in half-re-cooked state, and segfault happily

For future ref. - my regular routine if wrong reboot happens, is to boot into recovery console, and fsck.ext* (in my case, fsck.ext4) /dev/mmcblk0p2 -f. Then, if it revors journal, it's ok. If also/instead it tried to mess with filesystem (stopping at question), I cancel it (ctrl + c) and proceed to doing backup, mkfs'ing partition from scratch, and restoring backup.

backup will fail to include files with I/O errors (most of the times, some trivial-to-restore config file or browser cache, as they're most likely to to get corrupted during unexpected reboot), so they just won't be recovered - it's better to loose some triviality, than getting your whole FS trashed.

It's also worth to mention, that in case you're in situation, when you can't spend time on backuping/restoring right now, it's perfectly safe to continue with normal Maemo bootup - if you disabledautomatic fsck. Obviously, program with corrupted config file may get confused on I/O errors when reading/trying to write, but it isn't fatal (most of the times).

Hope it helps for future,
/Estel

// Edit

If you have backup of OptFS (/dev/mmcblk0p2 - by backupmenu, or manually made), you may recreate your filesystem, and restore it. It's your home corrupted, *not* rootfs. Otherwise, it's indeed, reflash time. You *could* dd whole partition and move it to some linuxbox with recent fsck on it, then try fsck'ing it there (on normal HD, not flash media), but it won't help much at this stage, probably, and is huge time waster.

I have all the important stuff (mainly pictures of my daughters) backed up from MyDocs to my desktop, but dont have any backups from other partitions (thougt always that there are nothing of mine in there :-)). I'm ok with the idea of reflash, but I havent got the time to setup the repair of the usb-port just yet (have to do this in my spare time but in workplace, so takes too many hours because this is something I would not want to do in hurry), so is there a way of recreating fresh /home or /opt within the system, without the usb-port. I could then install the needed software back one by one normally from the repos?

I actually have no problem using the phone right now, only the battery drains in couple of hours and I cant use the conversations and microb....

Btw, is the recovery console you are referring to the Rescue OS or something else?

I already have the backupmenu installed, but currently it does not boot, it reboots while after it tells it is chrooting. I could try to reinstall it and try to do a backup of /home to sd card ant then try to fsck it from linuxlive cd on my laptop. Alternatively I could try to install the rescue OS and do the FSCK from there. Which would you recommend?

Could I use working backupmenu to copy "working/fresh/clean" /home from some image or somebodys freshly flashed phone? Is this question totally stupid?

Ironically, MyDocs won't be touched during reflash (unless you decide to do full vanilla eMMC recover, which isn't necessary in your situation), so restoring backup of it won't be needed.

Now, as for fixing your situation without working USB port, there are few possibilities. Sadly, most of them require having backup of working OptFS made on 2nd device, using same kernel version (or from your own device, backup'ed before accident, but you don't have one). You would need backupmenu package (in one of latest versions).

Then, you would restore optfs and rootfs backup, from tarball made with backupmenu on another, working system - just ensure, that it have same kernel as yours, and backupmenu installed, too.

There are other ways to achieve same thing, without need for backupmenu - you could, for example, use recovery console by [/b]Mentalist Traceur[/b], alongside kernel with framebuffer support (kernel-power which you're using, meets this criteria), and do same operations (backup from working system, then mkfs.'ing your own, and restoring from working backup) - but, it's more complicated, if you don't have experience with it. Results are the same.

In case you can't get access to another N900 as "provider" of working backup (one used by family member or friend), sadly, you need to repair your USB port, first.

/Estel

// Edit

You could also use U-boot and boot RescueOS from microSD - but I'm not sure, if RescueOS have flasher integreated. You would need to ask in their thread.

Theoreticaly, using either recovery shell mentioned earlier, or RescueOS, you could repair your things, using bits extracted from Nokia's images (global), but frankly, it would be so time consuming, that you could probably repair few USB ports, meanwhile.

/Estel

I think it is time to repair the USB-port. But if your guess is right that my /home or /home/opt is screwed, wouldn't I have to do VANILLA reflash, and that would erase also my MyDocs or are you suggesting that I should reflash the FIASCO (/root if I understand correctly, which would also need new opt, so also VANILLA?)

Btw, many thanks already Estel, your support is superior.

Glad I could help

No, FIASCO reflash will nuke your roots and re-create OptFS. What wouldn't touch your optfs (or rootfs) would be kernel-only flash.

OTOH, vanilla eMMC flash nukes whole emMC partition table, and re-create it from image. Shouldn't be needed here but - in case I'm wrong, and to be on the safe side, you may install backupmenu, enter it's recovery console, mkfs.ext3 /dev/mmcblk0p2, and power device off, then reflash (of course, do it *just* before reflash, after fixing USB port).

This way you will be 100% sure, that your mmcblk0p2 is OK, and yet, you won't lose MyDocs. After reflash, you will have to install backupmenu again, if you intend to use it afterwards (which I recommend), as it's going to be nuked during flash.

As said, I'm 99% sure, that FIASCO flash nukes mmcblk0p2 anyway (and re-create it from scratch), but I can't find any source material claiming it, so there is this 1% chance, that I just made this detail up (thus "safe side" note).

/Estel

Thanks Estel for clearing this up for me. Now I understand it, even if it seem to layman a bit complicated at first.

So when you want to reflash the NAND (/root), you can do it alone and it reflashes also little part of the eMMC (/opt), but if you have to reflash the storage part of the phone (/home @ eMMC) you have to reflash also the NAND (/root) because the /opt gets nuked along the /home and /MyDocs.

Ok, I'm setting up for repairing the USB-port this evening so we'll see if I can change this thread to solved soon enough. Thanks.

/ Edit

Estel what would you recommend I set the temperature of our soldering station for usb-soldering. It is normally set for 400C for welding machine repair (bit bigger jobs than this) and I was planning to use it with custom made fine tip fabricated from copper wire. Is 220-250C enough?

Yes, if you want to do vanilla eMMC flash, you also have to flash root (FIASCO flash, so kernel get's flashed too...).

As for soldering I always use 400 too - I preffer to melt required workarea quickly, before heat gets transferred to rest of phone, with possibly harmful effects. Be wary of overheating (due to too long heat application, rather than too much temperature for short while) - it is 7-layer PCB, and space between tracks may be *very* thin inc rowded parts. It's easy to cause internal (in-PCB) short between layers.

/Estel

Status update:

My soldering skills and patience was not enough, I only got the USB-port in place and was enable to get the charging work (shorted the datalines after I found out that one of the data-pads was gone and used thin copper wire to connect directly to next component in line). Ok, so I cant flash, but after I got the charging to work I was able to use the phone without changing batteries. I installed latest version of Backupmenu and tried FSCK on the OptFS, but it gives me Segfaults, so no luck there.

Next I'll try to use the RootFS image found on the Robbiethe1st site http://robbiethe1st.afraid.org/BackupMenu/ to "flash" the device from the backupmenu and see how that works. I'm hoping that this image restores also the OptFS to factory state, but I cant be sure, because it is named only RootFS, but normally in flashing they come in pair.

Edit: found in the site the folder named complete image, where the rootfs and optfs are separately, so I'm going to download them to the sd-card with my laptop and restore them with backupmenu on the phone. Does the backupmenu use the tar-packages directly or do I need to expand them first?

Has anyone repaired their phone in this manner, because I have never used the backupmenu before for restore, so any suggestions are welcome.