Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Hi There
When using the terminal, Im working within a normal linux file system structure, which I am presuming is protected as I can't see this structure when using mass storage mode from the PC
How can I transfer files from /home/user to a folder that I can then access from my PC in mass storage mode?
I can see folders under ./obex-root, which sort of correspond to view from my PC, but cant get into any of them apart from documents which if I copy files to - do not show up when viewing from my pc

Whats the best way to do this?
How does the n900 filestructure work?

Many thanks

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Here's the breakdown:

/ is the root system partition where applications are loaded. This is a two Gigabyte partition.

/home/user/MyDocs is the area that is visable from the N900's GUI filemanager as "N900". This is the remainder of the internal 32GB chunk (about 27~ GB).

/media/mmc1 is the Micro SCHC card.

When you plug in the N900 in USB Mass storage mode, the host PC maps the /media/mmc1 and the /home/user/MyDocs partitions as separate readable drives.

If you want to move files from anywhere else onto your PC, first copy them to either the SDHC card, or to /home/user/MyDocs.

Hope this helps.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Do an "ls -la" in the terminal when you are in /home/user - the directories are all beginning with a ".".

So you have .documents/, .images/ and so on - these directories should show up when you connect the N900 to your PC.

EDIT: In /home/user/MyDocs that is - not in /home/user.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

This isn't quite right though. I'm not sure I know exactly how its set up, but this isn't it.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Actually / is 256MB built-in to the CPU package. It contains the OS/Firmware.

/opt -> /home/opt is 2GB reserved from the 32GB internal storage chip. It is meant to be used for anything you install on top of the standard firmware as / has very little spare space.

Is correct.

Basically, /home/user/MyDocs is where you are expected to put all your files such as music, videos, documents. The camera also saves here.

If you really need to access other parts of the filesystem you can always install OpenSSH - Server and then use winscp (if you are on Windows) to login and browse the filesystem. I am not sure if OpenSSH is in testing or extra though and you need to be a lot more careful when using it anyway as it gives you power to change things that will stop everything working.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Really? That's how it's always presented itself on my device.
Here's a df output from the N900:

http://www.besh.com/~chad/shot.txt

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Your rootfs is mounted on / and in your df output is shown as having 227.9MB of total size. That's not 2GB. /opt is actually in /home and has the additional 2GB for packages from Extras and the remainder of the 32GB built-in MMC is on /home/user/MyDocs.

So it wasn't quite what you'd described earlier, but I can see why you'd perhaps describe it that way. The fact remains though, that the rootfs is quite small and we need 'care in the community' to ensure that it doesn't get filled up.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Thanks guys - that was exactly what I needed to know :D

All sorted now

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

for later purposes:

http://wiki.maemo.org/N900_filesystem

will soon add the sizes of the partitions to the table.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

So why the 2GB partition at /dev/mmcblk0p2 (/home)? Is this for the rest of the system that wouldnt fit in the rootfs? Basically, /home is stuff we shouldn't really touch, and /dev/mmcblk0p1 (/home/user/MyDocs) we can use?

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Quick question,

Should a fresh device have about 74% used space on /?

If not, how much is used on a fresh device? Does anyone know?

I'm looking at 'df' by the way.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

is it ext2 / ext3 ??

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

i thought that they were supposed to expand that to 2gb (http://my-symbian.com/other/preview_n900.php) about 3/4's down in green.

checking in terminal brings up 227 of total size. how can i manually install programs in the 2gb space? will this help with the out of memory errors? thanks guys and gals.

first post by the way but always read up here for clues and hints. also got my n900 almost a week ago and love it!

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

That sounds about right, yes. Mine's at 78% with a couple of dozen apps installed.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Any larger apps will install under /opt (which is a symlink to /home/opt), which provides 2GB so should be enough. It's only smaller apps (or those in the -devel or -testing repositories which haven't yet been optified) which will use up the root filesystem space.

There's also currently a bug when installing multiple applications where the downloaded data isn't properly deleted after installing (until after a reboot), which can lead to running out of free space temporarily. This should be fixed with the next firmware though.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

For the records: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5450

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

This the opt (/home/opt) area where installed applications and data are supposed to me installed. The /home/user/MyDocs and memory card partitions are umounted in USB mass storage mode. Applications don't their library and files disappearing while they are running. Hence the reason for 2G /opt (aka /home/opt) partition. /opt is never un-mounted. So applications won't break in mysterious ways in USB mass storage mode.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Is it possible to resize the root partition? I'm thinking maybe 2GB for apps & libs is a bit low, but I don't know how big a lot of the apps are.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

You can't resize the root partition as that's on a separate memory device. The 2GB for apps & libs (/opt -> /home/opt) is not on the root partition though, so could in principle be expanded.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Before someone asks, 32GB for the N900 means:
32GB = 32000000000 Byte = 29.8 Gibibyte

The table on http://wiki.maemo.org/N900_filesystem has Gibibyte.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

Who's the ***** who decided that the world's capacities should be in Base 10, when the world of bits N bytes is ruled in Base 2?

In this case, Nokia is no worse than Apple for fooling people into thinking that Snow Leopard gave them more disk space, when in reality they changed from Base 2 to Base 10. These tech companies must think we're all ignorant tools.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

The question's more which idiot decided to use established global identifiers (k, M, G, etc.) for non-standard values. The SI multipliers had been around for hundreds of years before binary computers came along.

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

In what manner do you reboot the device? Do you bring up the terminal and type reboot like you do on a standard linux machine?

Re: Explain the filesystem to me please?
 

I just switched off (from power button) and on again.