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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.