[Mick_H1]

Yeah, will do that.................

OK what do you want to know? It's quite a long file, so unless I can get a dump uf it it'll take a few mins to type it all out.

[cpitchford]

just
df -h /

just the amount free will do! taa

[Mick_H1]

rootfs is showing 25.4M free, bearing in mind I've got a load of other stuff installed.

Not sure if any running widgets will have any effect on it, but I've got Accuweather, Desktop slideshow, Mediaplayer, GPE Calendar and a few other little ones running.

[cpitchford]

Ouchy! no upgrading to PR1.2 for you then!!

Seeing as you're a heavy user (assuming rootfs is so low) do you fancing being another gunea pig? My frequently used debug script can generate a report of what is using the rootfs space on a device... kind of listing the guilty packages.. Would you mind running this on your phone?

Could you download this file on your phone

http://chris.intrepid.cx/N900/debug.sh

and save it into the documents folder

Then open an x terminal and run

sh MyDocs/.documents/debug.sh

It will take about 30 mins to complete and will produce a file called debug.tgz on your phone's mass storage. Can you post that file back here as an attachment (you might need to rename it to .txt) or email it to me at the address given when the script finishes running..

I'll send you back a list of packages that are eating space on your rootfs.. I did this in another thread last week and I'm keen to see out of the dev/testing packages you're using which are the most greedy/naughty

Feel free to say no, though.. I'm not trying to do anything other than satisfy my own curiosity

[Mick_H1]

I'll get back to you later today with some info.

But out of my own curiosity. How easy would it be for the OS developers to increase the amount of memory available to the rootfs? And would it be possible to install apps to the memory card instead of the phone memory, or even increase the amount of app memory on device?

Now I've got a 4GB memory card, most of the 32GB device memory seems wasted.

[cpitchford]

The rootfs itself sits on a seperate flash device.. the 32gig storage is like an SD card.. and the machine accesses it in the same way.. the rootfs, however, sits on raw flash memory.. this works in a very different way.. and its small.. 256meg..

The thing is, you shouldn't need lots of root space, since packages should install in /opt (which is on the emmc) I maintained packages for a large newspaper a few years ago, and all of them were "optified"

All packages will use a little root space.. but I'm taking a few kbytes.. and if you've got 50meg free, thats a LOT of space for the little they'll use

To relocate the rootfs, you'd have to look at creating a new partition (or filesystem) on the emmc.. then switching from the original root onto the new root at boot time.. the theory is simple, but engineering an existing system to do it is a pain and easy to get wrong..

pivot-root is the feature.. for example, it would allow /home to become / and / to beome /home (swap location)

The other thing to consider is that the emmc is slower than the root storage

[foxmeister]

I'm not entirely sure but I don't hink you can install apps to the Memory card or the Media side of the mass memory because of the File system type used.

On AbiWord. When I tried this once it ate up MB of root and not just KB. I think it was about 6-10MB if I remember correctly

[cpitchford]

you're right.. because the universe is sick, the standard filesystem for memory cards is FAT..

On Windows, the file extension defines what type of file it is.. an executable file it ends in .exe or .com. or .msi or whatever..

Inside Unix, it isn't the filename that defines whether it is a program or not, it is a file permission:

debug.sh is a text file made with something like notepad
chmod +x debug.sh

sets the executable permission. NOW debug.sh is a shell script and can be executed..

The problem is, FAT doesn't support clever file permissions like that.. the only one that is really relevant is the "read-only" permission..

As a result, Linux can't tell if a file on a memory card (or the large part of the EMMC) is a program or not.. so you can't install software there..

Part of the emmc is formatted as EXT2, this is a Linux file system that does, obviously, support unix file permissions.. this is another reason why there is the split

[richwhite]

So if i can interject here, is abiword not recommended?

[Mick_H1]

I'm second thinking maybe not at the moment. Not until they get around to optifying it (if I've got the right wording).

But I suppose it was a good exercise to see what the beast was capable of.

Just running the debug script through mine now, see what comes back.

[Mick_H1]

Here ya go Chris. One debug output file.

I've had a quick sneakybeaky at the packagelist after renaming it as a .txt file, but I'll let you pass judgement.

[cpitchford]

oooh kay! that came out a bit screwy!!! Is there any chance you could email me the original?

An email address should have appeared at the end of the debug output

 *smirk* like you'll still have that open!

I'll pm you an email address

[Mick_H1]

OK, cheers. Got it, just sending it now.

[cpitchford]

Yeah, that worked! Seems posting here mightn't be such a great idea

Anyway.. here are your results:

package                            rootfs  mmcblk0p2
----------------------------------------------------
abiword                          13447739
gsfonts                           4493313
libdjvulibre15                    1764761
libpoppler2                       1487148
wget                              1373208
tutorial-home-applet              1176556
python2.5-minimal                 1028859    2702961
libvorbisenc2                      987532
gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-extra    709576
libtheora0                         601160
libgnomecanvas2-common             528114
libgnomeprint2.2-data              508411
libgnomeprint2.2-0                 440700
libliqbase1                        426263
xournal                            407364
libwmf0.2-7                        403911
numptyphysics                      317090     268301
libflac8                           303348
libt1-5                            271780
libwv-1.2-3                        271404
gonvert                            235197
contour-nerv-theme                 224278    6516320
hildon-theme-marina                201778    4566219
libgsf-1                           193332
librsvg2-2                         184516
liblcms1                           174700
libgnomecanvas2-0                  164476
libvorbis0a                        163136
gstreamer0.10-mkv                  150804
poppler-utils                      150632
python-central                     144137
defoma                             142948
libaudiofile0                      127540
desktop-photoapplet                117920
....

[cpitchford]

From that I can see that abiword and gsfonts (required by abiword) re using 17 meg of root space and NO opt space (or rather space on the emmc)

very bad!

and wget!! *** why isn't that in /opt.. From the looks of things abiword has eaten about 20meg root space and no opt space.. BAD abiword..

Why on earth has numpty physics (which is tops) used more root space than opt space?! At least the themes are working the right direction!

[Mick_H1]

WOW! So that AbiWord is absolutely huge.

I'll think about uninstalling it until they "optify" it. The themes are pretty big too compared to Symbian based themes.

And what about that "tutorial-home-applet", is that something that can be moved to the SDcard like I did with the video?

I thought that "desktop-photoapplet would be a bit of a hog, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Thanks for that.

[cpitchford]

packages generally can't be relocated.. they sit where they sit.. You can move the content, but then the package is in a confused state, files aren't where they're supposed to be .. so removing or upgrading the package might leave things in the wrong place or duplicate things..

I suspect it is left on the rootfs, because of the split between emmc and os images.. it would be harder for Nokia to create a root fs image (the FIASCO file) that had packages that were split across the EMMC and the rootfs.. it feels dirty to me..

If you download this file

http://chris.intrepid.cx/N900/diskspace.sh

you can run that against the debug.tgz file yourself to see the table of results..

sh diskspace.sh debug.tgz

What's more you can include or exclude packages from the list (the base os is already excluded)

sh diskspace.sh debug.tgz keep-this:abiword

package           rootfs
------------------------
abiword         13447739
gsfonts          4493313
libwmf0.2-7       403911
libwv-1.2-3       271404
libgsf-1          193332
librsvg2-2        184516
defoma            142948
libenchant1c2a     97519
libfribidi0        64360

So every package in abiword sits on the root fs..

18meg! very very naughty! Although 18 meg for a fully featured word processor is pretty impressive, if you ask me!!

[richwhite]

Dammit! I've been watching this thread waiting for the all clear. Not sticking 18meg on my rootfs, the device is slow enough as it is - for no reason at all.

Will it be optimised when it reaches app manager?

[cpitchford]

I imagine it would be a requirement for it to come out of dev/testing that the contents was relocated to /opt where possible

Filling your rootfs won't have any affect on the speed of your phone.. if anything putting stuff on the rootfs would be faster since the root flash is faster than the emmc.. but not by very much!

The problem is filling your root file system completely causes problems.. filling it below 40megs free will stop you applying FOTA.. but even with 5 megs free, it'd be as fast as with 65megs free..

It's just lazy not to have "optified" your packages..

[richwhite]

Ah ok thanks for that.

So what would cause it to run slow? Because sometimes it just feels unnecessarily sluggish.

I want to OC to 7-800MHz, but did you say it won't work on PR 1.2?