N900 Dead in 4 days
 

hey guys,
i just bought the N900 4 days ago, regardless the reboot issue.
i woke up yesterday it rebooted and it was it, it stuck and don't want to continue loading.
even when using the closing button its not working.
i removed the battery and reinstalled it again and tried to open the N900, but the same thing happened, loading ........... then stuck.
Please help me what to do.
is that a hardware or a software problem, and how to slove it, or do i return the phone?

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

https://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_firmware

follow the instructions

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

I wonder how many people who claim this actually installed a ton of software that filled up the root partition? Though granted, its poor design on Nokia's part to allow the root partition to fill up so easily.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Does that mean this a software problem not a hardware?
and if i reinstalled the firmware it will solve the problem?

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Yeah, I think the same...

3 guys I know that work with me, besides myself, that have a N900.

Mine phone works flawlessly and I even used some soft from repos that could brick it but thank god everything is going okay..

On the other hand, one of my friends, installed everything plus the kitchen sink on it and is now with a bricked device... I wonder how is this actually happening.

I am too afraid of freezing my device since I need the phone to work, skype rulez... Seems that some Macgyvers are not that chicken as me.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

it did the same with you and it didn't want to restart?
so, i go with reinstalling the firmware?
and how to avoid that to happen again?
i don't install software? or what?

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

i tried flashing the N900, a message of USB device is not detected.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

what exactly is the root partition of maemo/linux that it can be filled up so much that it breaks the system?

is it something like the system (c:/)-partition of windows?

do programs install to te root partition by standard? cant you choose where you want them to be installed? (or rather, cant you create a custom partition that you can use exclusively for your own need, like programs, so it doesnt interfere with the root partition?)

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

The root partition is essentially where the system binaries/configs go. In the bad old days every piece of software used to get dumped out to /usr or /usr/local. Sysadmins being who they are hated this because it meant that a bunch of crap was installed into the root partition that wasnt part of the base OS or required for the base OS. This is a pain in the *** for several reasons.

1) Restoring the OS became a royal hassle
2) Backing up the root partition became a royal hassle.

So the /opt partition was born and all third party software was meant to be installed to it. Good in theory, not so great in practice - a lot of the old legacy code etc still wanted to install on /usr. Optifying - which you may have heard of - is the process of changing where the software is installed to the /opt partition. Its not a large task but its one devs usually leave until last when porting software.
Now we get to the part about repositories. extras-devel and extras-testing come with these warnings every time you install a piece of software which basically says "Hey this could ruin your N900". The choice of listening to that warning is yours. If you choose not to and brick your device that leads devs etc to point and laugh - Nelson from the Simpsons style. Its not Nokias fault - nor theirs. The testing and dev repositories are for ..... testers and developers - people who as a rule know what they are doing.
You should never just shotgun a bunch of software onto your N900. The best rule of thumb is - install one piece, use your machine for a while and make sure its not broken (I suggest at least a day). Then and only then install another. This of course applies even to the extras repository as well, but to a lesser degree as software there should be at least optified.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

ok, this was a detail i didnt know.
so if i got this correctly, programs from testing/devel are installed to /usr, while programs from those "open" and secure repositories are installed to /opt?

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

It's not as blanket as that.

Software in testing/devel could go to either one.. it's completely dependent on whether or not the developer has been arsed with optifying it yet or not.

Before it makes it to just extras, however, it should have been optified.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Send it back, my friend. Mine rebooted several times, 2 hours after i received it. I didn't have time to add any applications before it froze on the boot screen (5 white dots) and then eventually gave up altogether. Nokia Repair Centre couldn't flash it back into action so i had to have a new one.

Dont mess about with it- just send it back.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Overtop,
Just Flash the firmware not the eMMC. That way you retain some of your app and various setting such as contact, email, 2 desktop screens etc. Once you got your phone where you want it to be, do a backup and save a copy on your PC.

I believe someone mention that you should manually turn off your N900 BEFORE it do the random restart 17 or 27 times. (I believe 17 times) That way you won't get stuck at the loaded screen.

There is a temporary fix for the random reboot by changing some number from 0 to 1. Check the reboot thread for the quick guide to.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

i see.

is there a way of telling where a programm is going to installed before actually installing it?

and if programs have been installed to /usr already - can you clean up /usr in a quick and easy way?

and if its a bad thing to install to /usr, why do developers choose this destination in the first place? why not install things to /opt by default (if the only difference is that stuff installed to /usr will screw up your system while installed to /opt it wont)?

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Rather than reflash like others are saying, you might be able to use the enable rd mode flag; boot up then shutdown and disable the rd mode flag. This can fix a "broken" system.

Nathan

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

/opt is not a linux standard. (well.. actually nothing really is a "linux" standard :o).

When you install any Linux system it actually will let you choose what partitions to create.. using something like /opt is only beneficial if you actually separate /opt from your root partition.

The idea behind /opt is that if you fill that up 100%, it won't affect your root partition (since it's a separate partition) and therefore your device will still boot, you just won't be able to install new packages. However, if you setup your system to just have a / partition.. then it doesn't matter if you install apps to /usr, /etc, /opt, /sfw, /somewhere/noone/cares/about ... they are all on the / partition and will still fill up the drive.

The vast majority of software available for maemo I believe is a "port" of a desktop Linux application where /opt is more or less not used. Some of the more common desktop linux layouts for hard drives are any combination of these 6:
/boot
/home
/var
/usr
/
swap

So on Desktop Linux.. installing to /usr could (if the user set it up that way) be just as efficient or system-friendly as installing to a /opt partition. The name is irrelevant, it's just whether it is a separate partition from the root (/). I would venture that the *most* common setup is simply a root (/) partition, with swap on a desktop. That's subjective though based on my readings of how-to's and tutorials.. and is the one I personally use because every time I try and break it up to one of the ones above I almost always wind up with too little space in one area, too much space in another.

Doing that, however, means I have to keep an eye on my disk usage as I could fill up my root with both my Home, and my software. So really.. this "/opt" thing is more for mobile or low space devices. In theory, it's great.. in practice - they probably caused more problems branching /opt from / than if they just left the whole 32GB available to /.

As far as your questions relating to identify non-optified apps see here and here.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

That is in no way true. There are standards for UNIX like OS's of which Linux is one. As such even Linux has standards.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

Is relevant in this case.

I have been a UNIX admin for 20 years and would NEVER just dump the entire disk into root(/) The root partition is intended to be strictly for OS requirements.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

I've read and understand the FHS as well Bratag. I built my own linux off of it using that and the LFS documents.

However, almost no mainstream distribution actually follows the guide 100%.

Solaris and FreeBSD have different filesystem structures, Solaris using things /export, which is mostly non-existent in any other Unix-related operating system. It also isn't even in the "almighty" FHS.

TLDP also has a "standard": http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/sect_03_01.html.. which is similar - but not identical to the FHS.

I think debian sums it up best:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html
In short - with pretty much all linux:
We follow this Standard..... except when we don't.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

LOL sad but true. The only "standard" is sticking with a given distribution over time (and even then things change..but at least they tend to be more evolutionary rather than right-angle turns that break EVERYTHING at once).

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

I agree... and it's blatantly obvious to anyone that moves from an RPM-based distro to a DEB-based one and tries to administer things via CLI and not GUI.

Config files change location, and sometimes formats, all the time. It's really a PITA. Plus, the two use completely different software to handle such things as network cards - you have /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0... vs /etc/network/interfaces. Granted, they both follow the "standard" in that configuration files are placed in /etc... but doesn't really help in this case. So now even where they *do* follow a standard.. it becomes more or less useless.

This is one of the reasons I liked Debian... if you administer a Debian system long enough.. *usually* you can find your way around a gentoo, and slackware distro as well. If you get used to an RPM distro though.. you pretty much get lost anytime you move to anything non-RPM based.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Well this I can agree with. The damn AIX admins at my work place persist in making the goddamn home directory 50MB because thats the base amount IBM give it in the install. Spend half my life trying to get more room allocated. - Thank God for smart filesystems. As for Solaris - dont get me started :). I guess you are right and it does come down to the individual admin. In the case of the N900 however Nokia have obviously tried to follow the FHS to a greater extent. More than anything I was trying to point out that the issue here is not Nokia "being stupid" but rather the end user not taking responsibility for installing software out of testing/devel.
Remember - just when you think you have made something idiot proof - they go and build a better idiot.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

That is absolutely correct Bratag... I certainly didn't mean to sound like I was calling Nokia stupid in any sense. On the contrary.. I said things like /opt are mostly used for more mobile or space-constrained systems.

I also said it was a great idea.. that if adhered to 100% would definitely be beneficial. But in this case, I think they have cause a few more *immediate* problems than if they had left the full 32GB on root (/)... but on the flip side... doing the latter would have likely caused more *long-term* problems.. once a user has found a way to fill up 32GB of space in software and/or movies on their root drive.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Oh, and just to prove that I'm not a complete idiot... Ubuntu, one of the most common Desktop Linux's now:

https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/install...86/apcs03.html
If you allow Ubuntu to partition your drive for you (the "easy" way).. it will create a single / partition.

Not saying it's right or wrong.. just saying it's common. And it's one I personally employ, but just because I understand the risks and keep a watch on my HDD space with several different tools.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

putting stuff on the root-partition (or system partition when talking windows) isnt something i would feel comfortable doing.
i mean, even in windows i strictly keep my windows-partition free of anything not windows-related, although its not necessarely needed in windows.

thats why i asked if you can tell beforehand where a program is going to install itself. or consequently, if its possible to clean the system-partition from non-system programs if they installed themself to that location (will a simple uninstall of a program delete everything?).
or if you can customize the install-location, even though it seems that in linux these locations are pre-determined.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

MSA

Refer to the very last line of post #16 on the last page.

The only way to tell where a program WILL go is to extract it yourself.. but those two links explain the other half of your question.

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

If you have the .deb file you can do dpkg --contents <pkg> and that will give you a listing.

Once installed you can do dpkg -L <pkg> to get a listing of the files and where they went.

Found that handy a couple of times

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

Try this before reflashing! It may fix your device without needing to blow everything out:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=37420

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

thanks guys for all your support.
i finally did it and fixed it.
but how can i avoid that happening again.
how to stop the reboot thing, that freezes the mobile

Re: N900 Dead in 4 days
 

As I understand it the /opt partition was a very last-minute decision which is why I called Nokia stupid. When you only have a 256MB root its rather obvious from the start you are going to need to decide where to install applications, as it sure as hell wont be on root.

Also the way the N900 uses root seems odd. Earlier I got the out of memory message for the first time, because UNINSTALLING software had filled up my root. I mean WTF?

Knowing this is a big issue, why didn't Nokia make it easier to find out what is taking up space on root? Its all bad worse of course by the "not releasing free space" bug which is supposed to be fixed when the holy firmware update finally comes out.

I love my N900, but to say Nokia didn't make some pretty silly mistakes would be an understatement. I mean stripping the NAT related modules out of the kernel for a start when every other mobile device around these days can run as a MiFi with a simple application install. The fact my friend with a 5800XM can do things my N900 cannot is plain crazy. And no I do not mean phone features, Nokia supposedly sacrificed phone functionality for a full Linux NIT, but its missing core components of Linux for it to deliver as promised.

It should have been EASIER on Linux, not require hacking around compiling new kernels. Its unacceptable that a Linux based device requires hacking to get things working that Linux has been able to do out of the box for years. Its near impossible to find a router that ISN'T running on Linux, yet here we are with the most important features missing on the N900.