giff53 | # 51 | 2011-12-19, 11:25 | Report

Nemo mobile eh? I could install it on the SD card you mean and form there see if In can reach the file system on the emmc?
I tried the above RD flags, no luck.

Hurrian | # 52 | 2011-12-19, 12:27 | Report

Does Nemo Mobile boot? Or does it sputter as usual?

Anyways, once you get Nemo to boot, you can just mount the filesystem on the eMMC and then worry about fixing Maemo.

The command that you run from Nemo to open the partitions on the eMMC:
(mkdir /media/mydocs && mount -t vfat /dev/mmcblk1p1 /media/mydocs && mkdir /media/homefs && mount /dev/mmcblk1p2 /media/homefs)

All you have to do then is dump eMMC contents to a network share such as CIFS or NFS

giff53 | # 53 | 2011-12-19, 12:59 | Report

I'll have to get a SD card before I can try. Thanks for the suggestion!

giff53 | # 54 | 2011-12-19, 13:02 | Report

That sounds good. You mean I should flash an older version of the firmware, right? I'll give it a try now. The thing is that right now the phone cannot stay off: it just boot-loops as long as the battery is inserted.

So, I flashed the second release of the maemo firmware (the whole combined thing) and the phone is still bootlooping as before, i.e., I can't mount it and get its contents...

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Last edited by giff53; 2011-12-19 at 14:04.

Estel | # 55 | 2011-12-19, 19:47 | Report

giff53, to be honest, if I were you (hate to write like that), I would totally screw content present in MyDocs - whatever it is - and just flash whole eMMC. really, you had there files so important, to delay repairing Your *whole* N900 by so much time?

Of course it's up to You, and if You're really mad about files on your MyDocs (which are non-existent already, I presume), you may try PR1.1 or Nemo or whatever You feel fancy. Otherwise, flashing whole eMMC would be sane choice, to check if Your eMMC is alive.

Remember, that even if Your eMMC is - by some bad accident - dead, You can use Your N900 with optfs on microSD.

/Estel

giff53 | # 56 | 2011-12-19, 23:09 | Report

Thanks Estel, also for the tip about the optfs (which I had never heard of). I am actually trying to enjoy these days without a smartphone (I went back to use my old gps which just makes phonecalls). It's not that bad, I am rediscovering reading newspapers, asking for directoins to people, getting lost... well, ok, I am on holidays so it's a lot easier

edit: I did it. I flashed the vanilla and the combined packages in sequence, as described in the wiki (from win XP) Still bootlooping I guess I should start looking for a new phone uh?

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Last edited by giff53; 2011-12-19 at 23:33.

Estel | # 57 | 2011-12-20, 01:45 | Report

Maybe, but in meantime, it would be great to check somehow, if Your eMMC is alive. It's all quite strange, cause critical hardware parts are alive definitely.

Sorry for not providing more meaningful posts - I can't get a quick method (from top of my head) to check if eMMC lives, other than using Nemo/recovery initrd/etc mentioned before (which aren't quick). you should probably wait for advice from more knowledgeable ones.

/Estel

// Edit

Of course, framebuffer kernel mentioned before (Has MAG replied to Your PM?), would give us a lotta hell more debug info, on when and why it's failing to boot.

Hurrian | # 58 | 2011-12-20, 01:57 | Report

N900 is rather hard to brick.

Oh, and as Estel said, the eMMC is worth looking at -- supposedly it falls off quite easily. dmesg log is needed to see whether eMMC is working fine or not though (the fact that Maemo breaks while optifying is a hint as to where the problem may lie

Estel | # 59 | 2011-12-20, 02:12 | Report

It's really pity, that giff53 doesn't have backupmenu (or backupmenu-multiboot) installed. that would be just matter of opening it, enabling USB-mass storage read&write, and connecting to linuxbox. Not to mention possibility of editing rootfs and optfs files from such linuxbox, if needed (if someone want to stay out root terminal).

I think, that backupmenu should be one of the very basic things every user have, but I've no ideal solution, how to achieve that. Make comments about it in Wiki articles related to popular stuff like KP and CSSU, or what?

/Estel

Hurrian | # 60 | 2011-12-20, 03:46 | Report

Ideally, u-boot would work like multiboot, and is shipped with kernel-power. Recovery mode package is pulled in by kernel-power, with separate recovery kernel, shell etc.