N900, first casualty: need doctor

[aboaboit]

With just the Nokia standard repositories enabled, I noticed that apt-get dist-upgrade showed a bunch of updates and, being my usual curious self, I immediately went ahead.

Unfortunately, this resulted in the removal of most of the important packages and now the device simply won't boot anymore.

I had a look around and only found flasher 3.5 but no firmware file. Question is, how do I recover the device?

[Thesandlord]

I think you should ask Nokia. Because the N900 is not out yet, they probably don't have the firmware out either!

[bugelrex]

Mmmm this seems to show Nokia isn't quite ready to ship these devices yet as the backend infrastructure is not properly tested/complete yet

[somedude]

If you are at the summit why not holla Peter?

[qwerty12]

Originally Posted by bugelrex

Mmmm this seems to show Nokia isn't quite ready to ship these devices yet as the backend infrastructure is not properly tested/complete yet

Yes, every user runs "apt-get dist-upgrade" upon seeing an update instead of using the lovely Update notifier and the Update view in the Application manager.

(Not to mention: You need to have a means of becoming root to run apt-get, and Nokia don't give this out of the box.)

[omniscy]

hmm, registered just so say: LOL

[bugelrex]

Originally Posted by qwerty12

Yes, every user runs "apt-get dist-upgrade" upon seeing an update instead of using the lovely Update notifier and the Update view in the Application manager.

(Not to mention: You need to have a means of becoming root to run apt-get, and Nokia don't give this out of the box.)

The type of buyer of the N900 is the type is the type to snoop around. I thought the phone is completely open as its sold as a mobile "computer", why doesn't Nokia give the root password?

[Laughing Man]

I wouldn't say the type of buyer for the n900 is the type to snoop around. Maybe most of us here that are coming from the internet tablets, but not the new buyers. Maybe symbian users would also be interested in tinkering (not familar with the platform).

Edit: Fixed my post since it didn't make sense.

[omniscy]

Originally Posted by bugelrex

The type of buyer of the N900 is the type is the type to snoop around. I thought the phone is completely open as its sold as a mobile "computer", why doesn't Nokia give the root password?

you CAN login as root, but you aren't by default.
As it is in (all) linux distro's.
As it should be

[ewan]

Originally Posted by Laughing Man

the new buyers are maybe symbian users.

Well that's not true for me at least. I'm not moving across from one smartphone to another, I'm moving from one Linux system to another. I'm only interested in the N900 because it's a (fairly) open Linux machine, and from some of the coverage and commenting on Linux news sites I doubt I'm the only one.

Edit: In any case, both having the phone die on package updates, and having apt behave differently to the GUI updater, are pretty clearly bugs.