Good day everyone! - whilst i wait for Brainstorm to stop giving me network errors i thought i'd write this out.

Brainstorm link Here

The inital idea with thanks to benny1967 and ColonelKilkenny

The general aim of this brainstorming idea is to create/develop a 'Save Me' function for people who have run out of rootfs space on their N900, it could possibly have other functions too.

Now, i am very aware that people should not delve into the development or testing repositories without the sexy official warnings - but as they are available, they will get used. That means, as much as we warn people, and they know it is their responsibility..... They are still going to do it, and the questions for support will end up in these forums.

So the Brainstorm proposal, is for a 'Save me' tool/application (Or even a choice in the bootloader application! - possibly)

The save me tool should be able to, for now:

• Recover space in the rootfs area
• Be simple to understand for most users

I agree extra functionality to fix other problems could be added, but for now i would suggest the basic function is to save a user by removing apps/free up space.

Some suggestions are as follows:

• Remove all extras-development applications
• Remove selected development applications
• Remove all unused packages (A bit like a windows file cleanuip wizard i suppose!)
• Throw out some output to the user showing current status - therefore allowing feedback to this forum/clever people, if there are still problems.

(Possibly forcing a reboot after the un-installs etc)

I would be very interested to hear any possible other functions the saveme tool could have! - as well as any better suggestions above if needed?

Edit : Still trying to link and add solutions - its sooooooooo slow!

You can free up a good chunk of space just by disabling the -devel and -testing repositories (which removes the cached app info for them).

I've heard that deselecting the extras repos and running apt-get update (edit: and apt-get clean and apt-get autoclean) can free up a lot of space...maybe it should offer to do things in stages, starting with this, then removing unused packages, then doing more invasive things like removing apps until enough space is freed up (35MB IIRC).

The problem with this idea is that the only use for this is for people who want the simplest solution possible. E.g. "This is broken, plz fix!". Therefore if this would be an application downloadable from the repositories I'd think a lot of people would download it and find later that their "apps are broken, plz halp". If someone comes here to ask for help, then giving information how and why to use the application would be handy.

What I have noticed that when the space goes full, I cannot use the application manager to remove anything. The dpkg from commandline also fails as there is no space. I solved this problem simply by:

# cd /var/lib
# mv dpkg /home/var_lib_dpkg
# ln -s /home/var_lib_dpkg dpkg

Now dpkg will always work and it is not necessary to clear space to get it working. Saved my a** few times

I'm having a nightmare with brainstorm - i can't add the solutions i want and it keeps hanging - have i done it correctly?!?! aghhhhhh (At work - so i was hoping it would be quick!!!)

Ok, ignore previous post - solutions are slowly being added - anyone fancy brainstorming the brainstorm system and adding a "Add multiple solutions" button? (Or at least make it visible!) hehe

And that problem is exactly the winning factor in this idea. We all want to make the Maemo community grow, and for that we want different kinds of people to join in, instead of only the high-tech, "early adapters". Simplicity, we need it!

I think this is a great idea, and also for the lazy No moar spays, use "Save me"!

Thankyou wheatbisc i think you hit the nail on the head so to speak

People like options - and yes this application may not solve world poverty or what comes out of Gordon Browns mouth, It should give a helpful tool to some.

It could easily have a selection of one click fixes as well, but for now i'm just brainstorming the initial use

Something like deborphan will help too.
Clear tempfiles
Clear caches
Clear /var/log/ (and reset debug modes,maybe a watchdog for oversize logs will help)