[montana_uk]

I keep running out of memory on my n900, even though there is a few GB free in the other areas of the "drive".  How can I decide where applications are saved to when I install them, to prevent this from happening?  I am regularly having to uninstall applications, just to be able to receive SMS messages.

[GT20]

Installing apps that were still in testing and/or were poorly coded in the first place like ones found in extras devel/testing can bring this on.   

Yep the device has GB's of room BUT your apps have to all share a 2BG partition and if a badly coded app installs it's files in the wrong place this can mess with the reported memory.

[cpitchford · Accepted solution]

GT20 is right.. Some applications have not been adapted to use the "/opt" location on the N900. There are three areas of storage on the n900:

26Gig of media storage, this is the location you see on your computer when using USB mass storage and the bit you see when using the file manager app.. No software can run from this area, it is only used for file storage..

256 Meg of flash storage. This area is known as the root or / storage. It is small because it contains the core OS. Packages should not be installed here. They don't need to be. It is for the core system only

2G of /home and /opt storage. This storage contains all your user preferences and settings AND it should contain all the installed packages. When you install a Maemo5 application, it should install all the content into /opt and therefore onto the 2gig of storage. Traditionally debian packages try to install into /usr, which is the SAME as the 256 meg root file system.. This is very bad on Maemo.. devel and testing applications have not all been "optified" meaning relocated onto /opt where this problem would not occur..

You cannot change the installation location of a package at install time. there is no settinh you can adjust to make packages install on the 2gig or 26gig filesystems. Linux/Debian packages don't work that way. You cannot change or edit a package to make it install on /opt if it wants to install in /usr.. You could edit the install locations by hand, but the chances of the package actually working once installed  are usually very close to zero. This work needs to be done by the developer of the software or by the person who maintains the package (if they aren't the same person)

Open an x terminal and run

df -h / /home /home/user/Mydocs

This will show you the real disk usage of the three filesystems

 

If the root filesystem (rootfs) utilisation is too high (over 95%) this will be because some of the packages you've installed are using the wrong installation location.. 

If your /home filesystem is getting full, there's not much you can do about this! At the moment you only have 2Gig of space to use.. though 2Gig is a lot of software for a phone!

 Remember, this 2gig is shared between your installed applications and your user content (contacts SMS calendar are all stored here too) but even with thousands of SMS messages and contacts, that should be only a few meg of storage!

[DrEJV]

x-term is fun.  But CONKY!!! is better for that "system" view.   Remove any testing and dev apps install Conky.

[montana_uk]

Thanks for the advice, guys!  

As most of what's out there is still Dev s/w anyway, I'll just have to remove what I don't REALLY need (stuff that sounded fun etc) and just use the essentials, until something better comes out.  

I'm a complete Linux novice, so all this talk of X-Terminal etc just confuses me for a bit.

Thanks again for the tips though. 

[mr_bridger]

Just to jump on this band waggon.....

i understand all this, but was wondering if there is a way to see what exactly is installed in rootfs? so we can see what to remove to free up more rootfs space.

also, what amount of rootfs it free on a brand new N900?? as i didnt check.

Cheers Ross.

Message Edited by mr_bridger on 02-Jan-2010 11:44 AM

[DrEJV]

Mr_bridger: unless you are an OS jedi master....don't even attempt.  one "oops, didn't mean to delete that..." and your reflashing your device.  Apps best uninstalled via app manager.  most of the "junk" is accessible via file manager.  but to answer your query... if you gain root all is accessable via x-term and there will be some file managers being ported that are fully "open"

Message Edited by DrEJV on 02-Jan-2010 12:39 PM

[cpitchford]

The root file system is about 70% used out of the box.. which is good.. new firmwares are only going to use more and more of it

There's no simple way to find out which packages are using how much storage.. I wrote a script that provided a file break down, but it's not entirely useful to an inexperienced user.. The app manager lets you remove only certain applications..ones that won't (shouldn't) damage your system!

[mr_bridger]

Hi thnaks for the comments guys, but i wasnt thinking of just deleting stuff!

i installed fennec, and at the time didnt realise it had installed to rootfs, and was taking 20mb roughly.

i only claimed it back with trial and error. deleting programs i had installed, until i got some space back. then i found out it was that!.

i just didnt know if there was a command just to display filed in that "folder" that would give pointers as to what to uninstall from app manager.

Its also worth noting, that i read a post in another forum (dont remember which) telling everyone to enable the Testing and development repositorys in app manager to get extra apps... i did this, as i had no reason why to think this was that bad an idea.... im sure others have done similar!

Ross.

[cpitchford]

Mozilla need to sort that out.. there is no need to install fennec or its libraries into /usr.. Though it makes more sense on an N810 (which doesn't have the same problem with split file systems)

I suspect there'll be a new package for fennec soon that solves the problem.. 

[mark246pl]

FAO cpitchford

I have followed your advise above and obtained the following;

 $ df -h / /home /home/user/Mydocs
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                  227.8M    167.7M     55.9M  75% /
/dev/mmcblk0p2            2.0G    100.1M      1.8G   5% /home
df: /home/user/Mydocs: can't find mount point

can u advise where the 3rd memory listing is (u have shown 3 listed) and also what is the error messge "can't find mount point" ? is it related ?

[montana_uk]

Yeah, that was the big problem for me too.  I installed Fennec Beta, to see how it compares with the n900 Web Browser, and had to take it off shortly after, as I was out of room to do simple things.  As it was the beta and not the final product, I can only hope they sort out it's installation issue too.

[cpitchford]

---

mark246pl wrote:

FAO cpitchford

I have followed your advise above and obtained the following;

 $ df -h / /home /home/user/Mydocs
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                  227.8M    167.7M     55.9M  75% /
/dev/mmcblk0p2            2.0G    100.1M      1.8G   5% /home
df: /home/user/Mydocs: can't find mount point

can u advise where the 3rd memory listing is (u have shown 3 listed) and also what is the error messge "can't find mount point" ? is it related ?

---

MyDocs

It's case sensative.. the D is capital..

Looking at your usage it is REALLY low.. 

Are you still having out of memory problems?

[mark246pl]

FAO cpitchford

I am not meaning to hi-jack this thread, I just wanted to try your x-terminal command for finding out about my memory status but

This is from your previous reply

Open an x terminal and run

df -h / /home /home/user/Mydocs

and the d of df is NOT capitals

and so you can see from my x-terminal command it also was with a lower case d like yourself;

$ df -h / /home /home/user/Mydocs
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                  227.8M    167.7M     55.9M  75% /
/dev/mmcblk0p2            2.0G    100.1M      1.8G   5% /home
df: /home/user/Mydocs: can't find mount point

So unless I missing something why do suggest it should be a Capital 'D' ??

I tried capital Df and the x-terminal reply was as follows;

~sh: Df: not found

So again, please can you clarify as to why when I carry out the command df -h / /home /home/user/Mydocs as per your first advice I only get two memories detailed not the three you have?

Thanks

[cpitchford]

---

cpitchford wrote:

---

mark246pl wrote:

FAO cpitchford

I have followed your advise above and obtained the following;

 $ df -h / /home /home/user/Mydocs
Filesystem                Size      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs                  227.8M    167.7M     55.9M  75% /
/dev/mmcblk0p2            2.0G    100.1M      1.8G   5% /home
df: /home/user/Mydocs: can't find mount point

can u advise where the 3rd memory listing is (u have shown 3 listed) and also what is the error messge "can't find mount point" ? is it related ?

---

MyDocs

It's case sensative.. the D is capital..

Looking at your usage it is REALLY low.. 

Are you still having out of memory problems?

---

DOH! Now read carefully

df is lower case, that is a command.. but the D in MyDocs is capitals.. Linux is case sensative and it just so happens Nokia decided that D should be upper case! Purely cosmetic, but absolutely required for the df command!

[mark246pl]

cpitchford

Many thanks for the lesson in lower case & upper case re MyDocs - it worked. I wasn't suffering from low memory problems that was the thread originator.

Thanks for your advice