Dear All

i am facing a real problem here,

i discovered that my home directory is full and i cannot save new contacts anymore, and i found that the old apps that were uninstalled are still there and whenever i try to remove it by "case" "permission denied" , so i searched and found this topic on our beloved forum
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...693#post682693

i followed the instructions there which were as follows

go to xterminal

root [enter]
rm -rf /opt/* [enter]

i closed xterminal without waiting for the process to finish and then the disaster began.

when i try to open any application, black screen shows with app's name above as if the app is loading and then this screen disappears and back to main screen. this happened with every app i tried to open. i switched the phone off and then back on

this is what happened: all the icons in desktop and status bar disappeared,all menu icons vanished and instead of app names there are strange symbols as you can see from pics below.


the menu icons turned crazy !!!

desktop went blank

phone mode turned all white with all names disappearing

obviously the system is destroyed and i cant open any app , but the phone receives and make calls normally and the camera is working normally.

sorry for this long post

but how can i restore my os ( all i need is contacts and images)?

Thank you

Ahmed salah

looks like you need to reflash...

Yeah, just trashing /opt isn't a good idea and hasn't been since PR1.2 when Nokia moved some space-heavy stuff out there.

You'll want to reflash your device so that it can rebuild itself.

Wow what you just did is comparable to like bombing the whitehouse of your n900 lol! Opt folder is where applications are stored. deleting it is like wiping out your n900

mosh11: I'm sorry pal, really am, I'm quite sure you need to reflash your maemo os. Don't be worried, it's a pretty painful process. Just follow the guide on wiki maemo.org.

http://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_tablet_firmware

If you have any important docs or anything else (where they shouldn't be), rescue them first. Your MyDocs folder will be ok after a reflash of maemo, you don't have to rescue anything from there.

Oh, and in future, stay out of folder like /opt. never use commands like rm without great care.
Good luck!

no i didnt want to delete applications,

for example, i uninstalled forgatto and i still find the folder there and it is taking (120 MB) !!
so i wanted to delete this folder

actually i typed that command in xterminal and i didn't really know what it does

as i understood it gives permission to "opt" folder right ? it doesnt delete any folders , i hope

Unfortunately you didnt understand.

"rm -rf /opt/*" deletes everything in your /opt/ folder, which includes all applications along with (since pr1.2) several components of the OS itself which are required for it to function properly.
Basically, as you've stated in your thread title, you've fairly succesfully destroyed the install and need to reflash the device.

so if i flashed my OS to PR 1.3 , contacts and apps will stay there unchanged ?

Well your apps are gone, youll need to reinstall them after flashing. You will however retain most of your apps' settings as for the most part their config files get written to the emmc, which reflashing doesnt touch.
Regarding contacts, reflashing will wipe these. I hope for your sake you either have a backup (the device's inbuilt backup software backs up contacts + other stuff) or theyre also saved to your sim card.

ohh this is an important information man

it seems that the only solution is to reflash