Oh well. This is the story of how I b0rked my N900.

Last night I wanted to see a video clip from teh intarwebs and to do so, I had to download it. It was somewhere in the size order of 30-40 megabytes. I chose to save the file to the micro SD card.

However, before the file was done downloading, it stopped, giving me the message that there was not enough room in /var/tmp.

I took a look at how much free space I had on rootfs, using StorageUsage. (Btw, the StorageUsage GUI was much improved since I last used it.)

I already had some free space on the rootfs, maybe 20+ megabytes, but apparently not enough to download a 40 mb file.
(What if I want to download a 300 mb file? I did specify to save it on the MMC because I didn't want it on the rootfs in the first place... I don't quite understand why it need to go through /var/tmp.)

Well, anyway, I took a look at the files taking up the most space on rootfs, which are the usual suspects. Locale, Microb, mainly. So I looked up some of the threads on here where there are tips on freeing up rootfs. Among others, I believe this one: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...tfs+free+howto. Anyway, I ended up in the Wiki and I ran one of the .sh scripts in there.

It should be said that I've used similar resources to free up some space from the rootfs before (fw 1.1 update) so some of the things in there would already have been done.

The freeing up space process seemed to go just fine. I now have 94 MB free. What wasn't as fine, was that I seem to have broken stuff in the process.

The first symptom was rather obvious, Microb stopped working. When I start Microb, it'll appear to try to connect to a web page, but the window is just white, and changing the url and press enter doesn't even make it blink.

At this time I realized chances are I have to do my first reflashing, but I don't want to unless I have to. I would rather try to undo the damage, even if it seems unlikely I'll manage to get it right.

I looked up another thread where they attempted to reinstall Microb using apt-get install --reinstall. Didn't work. Infact, now when I try to use Microb, and other applications, I get the yellow system message "Operation temporarily disabled due to low memory". I get that a lot now. The desktop widget reports that 100-150MB in use. The CPU is mostly at 95-99%. There is room at the rootfs.

So I get the feeling that this is more of a file system/permission or filepath problem than actual memory problem. I just now tried to edit the desktop icons, and it threw up the memory warning. The "done" button didn't work after that, so I could not leave the edit mode.

I also discovered that now SMS doesn't work. I get the yellow line with a preview of the message, but when I enter the conversation mode, it only lists a blank, black page instead of the new and old messages. This is most certainly related, but a bit surprising, since it is a different part of the system.

So, I don't think I can fix this :B I'm going to jump into the howtos and wikis again, this time to find out how to flash the device.

All this because there wasn't room for episode 2.01 in /var/tmp. Somehow I don't believe I would have had this problem on the N810.

smses are opened to microb so the problem is with microb.

I recently downloaded an ubuntu livecd image (600mb?) to microsd and I have about 25mb rootfs free..... so imo there was something wrong with your system at the first place... you probably should have rebooted before any rootfs cleaning scripts

Yeah, I did.

Well, that explains the SMS, it certainly is Microb. It's probably also Microb that runs the CPU at 96+%... Seems like it's trying to fork a process that fails in some way, because the process at 100% has a different process ID every refresh @ HTOP. Needless to say, it drains the battery fairly quickly this way.

I'll have a look at that before I try reflashing.

Since I am assuming there will be a reflash at some time soon anyway, I thought it might be interesting to simply uninstall microb-engine. And sure, the CPU usage dropped from 100% to 8%.

Exactly as expected, I guess. Now I'll try to reinstall and see if 1) I can, and 2) if the CPU goes back up to 100%.

I could install the package, but the bi effect is a reboot loop, so I guess that was the last stop before Reflash Station.

Flashing completed, Microb seems to be working again. Story's at an end.

That was me being overly optimistic :/

Microb works somewhat at the first page viewing, but after that it will act weird, and it won't happily let me visit a 2nd site.

And I still get "Operation temporarily disabled due to low memory".

I think I need to wipe this thing clean.

I did. Works well again now. Guess I have some maps to download.