rootfs size
 

Is the rootfs way too small? Since the last update almost ate 50megs of the rootfs there must be a solution to this size limitation? After 2-3 additional firmwares there wont be any space left? Is there a workaround? Seems like bad planning to me, but I'm just a n00b when it comes to these sorts of things, can anyone please explain.

Re: rootfs size
 

i heared from some one u can change the size in partitions on the n900 i dotn know if this counts for the rootfs

Re: rootfs size
 

Well, there has to be a way around it... I've had my N900 for 4 days, and I've used 75% of my roofs.

Re: rootfs size
 

The rootfs is 256 MB since this is what you get built-in on the OMAP3 system-on-chip from Texas Instruments. We have to live with this (hardware) limitation. The N900 uses filesystem compression for dealing with this, and applications ought to install into directory /opt which points to a 2 GB partition on the 32 GB internal flash disk.
Repartitioning cannot resize the rootfs as it's different from the internal 32 GB flash.

Re: rootfs size
 

The update shouldn't have used any more space. You should have 50-70 meg free (depending on installed apps) just like before.

rootfs is actually on a different piece of hardware than the rest of the device. 256MB of NAND Flash. So you can't repartition it away.

On the N900, there is something called "optification" going on to make that partition plenty big enough for all of the applications you want. Any files that would go on rootfs get put onto the flash drive and a simlink gets put in its place.

Hopefully that makes sense.

-Will

edit: looks like I was beaten to the punch.

Re: rootfs size
 

You can disable some of your repo's to free some space.

If your rootfs might be too full, afaik, is a practice for software that are not yet optified and are not yet ready to be distributed by the main repo.

If you use just official repo's this should not be happening.

Re: rootfs size
 

Ok, so if I get this straight.

software from none-release ready repos use rootfs because many of them are not optified for this hardware system, while optified software puts all files elsewhere and leaves the rootfs in peace while just leaving a simple link?

Re: rootfs size
 

That's it. Software from the regular repositories, including Extras-Testing, should be optimized to leave the rootfs alone. (There have been some exceptions.) Stuff from Extras-Devel or other sources almost certainly is not. (Some in devel might be.) So if your rootfs is getting full, removing packages installed from devel or outsides sources should free up some space. You may or may not need to reboot after removing them for the system to properly recognized the rootfs size.

Re: rootfs size
 

Cool, I get it now! Thank you so much for explaining.

Re: rootfs size
 

Anyone know what Used/Avail should be after a clean flash, not installing any apps? Any general 'benchmarks'?

I happened on this thread because I am looking for creative ways to optimize space on rootfs (excuse the pun - or not :-)

My N900 and I go back to November now. I've always kept a watch on rootfs. I've done plenty of re-flashing to clean the slate and start fresh since I test a ton, have been known to download from testing and devels to check out what's in the pipeline and re-flash when I want things stable again or just a clean slate. Until a couple weeks ago when I finally decided, "OK, now it's sterile run time with ZERO anything from testing/devels, no apt-get install, purge packages/libraries that get orphaned during a re-flash, etc."

In summary, before my update to PR1.1 but after a fresh flash and update to the pre-update update the day before (not a single app installed other than what comes with the firmware), I had 72% used.

The next day, after a day of very little other than playing with BT to see if that was handled, PR1.1 popped up. Cool! BT savior! I skimmed some change log somewhere (or it might have been the maemo forum) and noticed it was said to free up some space on rootfs. I think the number I read was it gave you back 20-50MB - don't recall exactly.

Finished update, a couple restarts, a shutdown, battery pull for an hour for good measure, blessed catalogs are all I had enabled (so a total of 4), and I was at 76% used even after an autoclean/clean. What the what?!?!

I figured I would worry about looking for info on this later. So, here I am, a week or so later. I have been fairly busy so my hobby, fun phone I haven't done much of anything with other than calls has now gone from 76% to 81%. Now that's a WTH.

I haven't installed anything, have very little installed in general: AdBlock Plus, AP News widget, FB widget/uploader, Foreca, OpenSSH (c&s), rootsh, sudser and none of that has changed.

I can symlink apt cache and move off rootfs - who knows why it's not anyway, keep the default 4 enabled, add testing, tools and devels. and IIRC you'll see 4-5% additional usage - I can also move off some other things, but I really hate doing any of this because it can get very convoluted and prone to being forgotten about later.

Any other useful tips or why this growth with relatively little activity? I know, search and ye shall find, but biggest question is what the heck has taken another 5% over a week.

As many have mentioned, this tight space and the way Nokia has chosen to use rootfs rather than internal mmc for some of what is on rootfs (i.e. via symlinks) seems to be a constant battle. In the past I have done a bunch of symlinking and saw no problems related to it (other than having to keep track of what I've done and add one more thing to my 'worry' list/list of variables if an issue pops up.

Re: rootfs size
 

Rootfs is compressed and thus not immediately flushed. Reboot before taking measurements.

Increases in messages, calls, etc, got logged. Files change dynamically.
Repositories grow. (Yes I read). Just saying.

Several apps that seem very small depend on libraries that hare huge. For example, Google Latitude is 6M, but it pulls libqt4-network that's 21M and not optified apparently.

Rootfs varies, sometimes as much as 10 MB depending on repos, boot, upgrading packages, etc.

I, e.g., have some 30 MB left, with ABI installed.

I warmly recommend you install Storage Usage and scan packages. It shows you per-app usage, red for non-optified, green for optified.

Re: rootfs size
 

Well, I have 68% - 70% used for my rootfs.

Re: rootfs size
 

Yup, I haven't bothered looking because I restart often enough, but any idea on frequency? pdflush handles this - no?

Ah, that never occurred to me (um, don't ask why - I'm a slow learner). Though, since text from all of this combined shouldn't be that much and compresses extremely well, seems like it should be rather trivial. Though, I'll check a couple things out because of this (e.g. delete a couple IMAP accounts that have have over a thousand messages each (not all inbox though), test how storage is handled (just headers or full messages - haven't bothered to try/look/notice what happens in offline mode and I rarely bother - well, can - open attachments on it). Interesting...

Hell yeah! Great idea. Been farting around with ps / dpkg. Like I said, I'm a slow learner.

Thanks.

@radiowc - thanks, but did you have a point besides just saying what you have? I don't follow why you posted that nor would anyone else. BUT, we'd all (well, at least I) love to know context. This sounds like a fresh flash with nothing installed. I've flashed this bugger A LOT since November (as I imagine most have done plenty also) and that's about where I end up too after re-flashing. Based on a couple months I've been using this and research I've done, I think everyone would be interested what you've done to keep it this low if you're going to say "I've had it for 2-months, installed some apps and use it a lot" - a quick list would help a lot of people (with any disclaimers next to each what issues you've run into).

Even better is if you or someone out there can tell me they symlinked off a bunch of stuff under /usr/* to /home and were able to use OTA SSU without problem. That's been the biggest question about doing this (that I've noticed) - well, that and deleting certain files that you don't need or use. Apparently, SSU checks before updates and I want to keep this in a fairly stable mode and able to get OTA updates rather than set aside a few hours to re-flash and re-setup everything just the way I like it.

Re: rootfs size
 

Just stumbled across this: http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space

optifying python brought it down 3%.

Re: rootfs size
 

Sorry, optifying python didn't even bring it down .1MB - was ssh'd in and looked at the wrong df -h when I scrolled up.

Re: rootfs size
 

I asked the same question some time back. The N900 came from Nokia, with 68% full, i.e., about 71 MB space left of 227.88 MB rootfs on 1.2009.42-1

bun

Re: rootfs size
 

Wiki suggested 100 but it seemed a bit odd to me.

I had 45M when flashing to .51, and I have uninstalled few of my apps. I still had like 15 or so. Space peaked at over 50 right before flash, so I'm guessing along the lines of 60? Maybe more if a good scrub is applied.

But it could be more. Localization, optifying some rarely used components, moving Python off, relocating caches, renouncing the boot video, etc.

Re: rootfs size
 

Thanks guys. I got distracted, but now looking for more - more is always better...

I'm crawling through Storage Usage (thanks again - this is an excellent app) having scanned packages. I'm doing some research on some of the packages (still a fairly wide hole on info for some of these).

Right now, focusing on low hanging fruit that shouldn't cause any [obvious] problems. Just found a quick way to return ~2MB is apt-get remove chinese-font and rm -r arabic under /usr/share/fonts (under ndi's category of localization). Couldn't find a separate arabic package so just worked on assumption it's part of base fonts included, but if someone has info on it other than that, let us know.

I quickly remove that friggin annoying boot video on every Nokia device - nothing like restarting your phone in a meeting that is boring as watching FoodTV when suddenly that thing blares out louder than I can get my speaker phone to play at then everyone turning around looking at my 'oh crap' look. WTH can't they at least mute the damn thing at least if you have it in silent mode? Might make a few customers happier.

I'm keeping a list of what I'm doing with notes on packages. I'll let it stew for a couple days then post.

Re: rootfs size
 

With PR 1.0.1 it was possible to partially repartition the N900 by copying the /usr-dir to another partition and mount the folder over the NAND-rootfs one. Booting is a few seconds more and the eMMC is just a bit slower when accessing many files at the same time...

Re: rootfs size
 

I have also been moving things to opt and symlinking them. I have found that it is best to create a directory in opt and mirror the root off that with the things you plan on moving. This in itself documents what was moved to where. I use /opt/reclaim to do this:

Thing I have symlinked to /opt to save up on root space without issue:



/usr/share/hildon-welcome/media -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/hildon-welcome/media
1.4MB

/var/lib/apt -> /opt/reclaim/var/lib/apt - 14MB if you have extras-devel enabled
/var/lib/dpkg -> /opt/reclaim/var/lib/dpkg - 3MB

/usr/share/sounds -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/sounds - 3MB

/usr/share/fonts/chinese -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/fonts/chinese - 2MB
/usr/share/fonts/arabic -> /opt/reclaim/usr/share/fonts/arabic - 1MB

Re: rootfs size
 

An app would be great, methinks. Why nobody wrote one yet is beyond me.

Just list packages and check would move to /opt/reclaim and ln -s, while unchecking moved them back.

Re: rootfs size
 

Who knows - there may be an app or script out there we haven't located. In any case, I'll write a script eventually that is 'safe' and one that is more aggressive (I don't have time to go through the app process). I /suppose/ I could add 'clean' 'unclean' commands to it, but I may have to push that to debatestorming to figure out if people really want that and what the commands should say, stew in there for a while and then push off to some future update that won't have a date :-)

Another suggestion that I found 'accidentally' whilst laying in bed last night messing with it. Don't like or use one or both of the themes? This is easy enough to remove and re-install later, but each one frees up ~3%:

(assuming everyone who knows apt and it requires root as well as making sure the theme being removed isn't the one being used):

//the blue wave theme named Nokia Nseries: frees ~8MB:
apt-get remove hildon-theme-alpha

//the orange them named Digital Nature: frees ~7MB:
apt-get remove hildon-theme-beta

To be safe, you can easily see what theme you are using by checking default symlink:

0x90:~# ls -l /usr/share/themes/default
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 23 Oct 30 03:31 /usr/share/themes/default -> /usr/share/themes/alpha

(I don't know if this would affect a future SSU or anything else - shouldn't, but like I said, apparently updates check for various files to be in certain 'places' - they shouldn't bother with this, but who knows.)

Now, why wouldn't those be optified? Haven't tried symlinking to /opt to see how it works, but will probably get around to that today.

Re: rootfs size
 

Nope - duh. This has nothing to do with what you are currently running. Seems a 'safe' fallback.

If you remove alpha theme, change symlink to beta.

As always, at your own risk.

Re: rootfs size
 

Uhmmm, there have been several reports that themes break if the alpha/bet a are removed, because not all themes change all UI elements.

If you lose the close buttons on windows after a reboot, you did a baaaad thing.

Oh, and, I can't swear, but in PR1.1 I think a large portion of Python was optified, so the hint (from 1.01) didn't get you much space.

Oh, and, once you have 30-40 MB free, stop. Each part that is on the root means that it's faster. Optification is a tradeoff between speed and space. Don't overdo it. :)

Re: rootfs size
 

Interesting, I manually rm -r alpha and changed default symlink some time ago. IIRC, I ran like that for a week (not unusal for me to flash weekly so far). I later forgot about so never removed it again then saw it was a package (thanks to Storage Manager). I removed it last night and have restarted several times today - so far I haven't seen anything. Close buttons are still there and are orange rather than blue :-) Good info though so now I'll pay closer attention. I haven't seen those reports, but maybe they did an rm -r like I did last time (though I didn't lose a close button then). The apt-get remove handles the default symlink - I just added that in case.

RE: optified, yeah, like I said, I didn't get anything out of that other than a messy df.

Dude, I'm on a mission to have 100MB free. I want to be the root master. Right now I am at 75MB free. It hasn't bricked yet so that's good news. It sped up on boot too, instead of 5-minutes, it's down to 6.5-minutes - the higher the better, right? :-)

Didn't I see a lot of people having probs installing SSU w/only 30MB free?

But, yeah, good advice for us - no huge benefit to a bunch of free root space other than not having to worry about it and moving too much out of nand will affect performance for some things.

If I run into an issue w/theme I'll post back (or any other issues I find in my ventures).

BTW: Don't want to take this thread off topic, but a little side road: I happened onto this bug and thought, "cool, 'pwnedyou' will look great on people's stereo", but found a few things even though someone says it's fixed. If I change with fmtx_client or manually, it changes initially - can rerun fmtx_client or cat the files several times, looks good, then reverts back to default "Nokia ". I can enable/disable, it'll still appear fine, but for some random reason, it reverts (w/out a restart). Then, noticed the power_level issue so checked on that - yup, drops tx pwr when plugged into usb then back to full pwr when unplugged. However, when I disable the radio, it is still showing power (has 113 - not sure if radio is on though or what) - time/enable/disable/etc - nothing changes it back to 0 until a restart... if you feel like looking at that. Doubt it drains battery much, but w/all the battery complaints after 1.1, each bit helps:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7271

Re: rootfs size
 

Don't mess with the missionary man I always say. Or Eurythmics. Can't remember.

Point is, it's going to be longer to boot and ... 6.5 minutes? Rili? I'd throw away my PC if it ever booted in half that.

Distracting. Point is, at some point during this quest you may lose some data that is required by something, like OTA upgrade or somesuch. And you will not know what you did. Keep testing.

I wouldn't overdo it, but frankly your kind if people is invaluable for the rest of us. If people were like me they'd never know what happens if one removes Chinese fonts because I don't do anything I'm not fairly sure of. We're called chicken.

Never flashed my device and, frankly, even rebooting makes my teeth itch. I didn't reboot any computers this year. I'm a sysadmin and a coder.

PR 1.1 required 42M free to install, people recommended 45. Might be different depending on localization.

You keep at it, we anxiously await more tales from the rootfs crypt. Just remember we don't pay for new N900s.

Edit: as for the bug, make sure you have their version and if it still happens, post and vote. They should reopen and fix if it's broken. I don't have a radio in my car to test.