Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Well....managed to do it again...although different problem now...hopefully, someone can please advise....If I should start new thread, please let me know...

In order to free up some rootfs space, to try and avoid having App Mgr problems again, I followed all the suggestions in the Wiki article 'Free Up Rootfs Space'...

This includes the one about deleting a bunch of files:

I did all the above, but as instructed, I kept a few of the English related language locales in "/usr/share/locale" such as 'en_US', 'en_UK', etc..

A few minutes ago, I rebooted my N900 and VOILA! now my N900 is showing icon labels, system messages, etc, in another language, not even sure which one, but it isn't English, that I'm sure!

Anyway, went to the Settings app in the System directory, opened it and clicked on the 'cpal_ti_language_and _regio....' item and it opens for a second, and then poof it disappears, then I see the message:

Obviously, I must have deleted at least one item too many....

:rolleyes:

So, my question is whether there's anyway to fix this or do I need to reflash???

I know that in Debian I would try doing in Terminal

Anything similar to do in Terminal in maemo??

Thanks for any and all advice!!

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

take off the battery and the sim, insert new sim and reconfigure it on the startup wizard, then put back the first sim again... good luck

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Ummm....I don't have sim card in N900, don't use it as a phone, just use WiFi...

However, just tried what you suggested, removed battery for a minute, put it back and booted up again, but no startup wizard came up????

Do you need to do something else to get startup wizard to open up???

Thanks!

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

did you try to reinstall locales?

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Thanks, michaaa62.....

Just tried that....while the locales install worked, the Settings>Language and Regional... just crashed like before when I clicked on it.....

I did reboot after installing locales.....

:(

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

try

dpkg --configure -a

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Thanks, AlMehdi.....

Just tried that.... entered command and then after a minute, got prompt at new line...didn't ask me to choose a language, etc...

Then rebooted, then tried Settings>Language and Regional... just crashed like before when I clicked on it.....

Anything else to try or is it reflash time???

Thanks!.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Probably time to reflash. I did the same thing.

In my case I moved locale-archive to /opt, then messed up the symlink (and overwrote locale-archive). Got all the unlocalized names for everything. Fortunately, I had a backup copy of /opt at home. Put up with it for the day, then copied locale-archive back to /opt and did the symlink correctly. Rebooted, all was good again.

Hope that helps you.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Thanks, lemmyslender....think you're right, it's time to reflash and know that I have a fresh, proper base to work from....

:)

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I did exactly the same thing. I think that free rootfs page needs a little warning on not to maybe delete the locale-archive file :)

Managed to get the texts and language settings menu back to normal by copying the locale-archive file to my N900 from a scratchbox running on my Ubuntu. It was PR1.0 I think so not sure if it will cause problems..

Some UI lag after all the optimizations to free rootfs space. Did manage to free 50 megs which is nice but if this lag continues I guess it's reflash time afterall :)

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Just a note to say that restoring the deleted locale-archive file fixed at least my problems nicely, even though it was from a scratchbox. The UI lag seemed not to be caused by it or the othe rootfs freeing tips done as it disappeared after next reboot.

Over 50 mb more rootfs space was well worth the hassle!

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I have the same issue. All text labels are showing the label names instead of the correct text message.

Example is my clock says "wdgt_va_24h_time"

I have tried all the suggestions above. Can someone confirm that this is related to the locale folder in usr/share. thanks.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Think so.....

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I would like to remove unused lang files also wich files do I remove? I only need english.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

FWIW, I keep a few that started with 'en' for English....such as:

en

en_US

since I'm in USA...and deleted the rest....

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I did the moverootsh.sh and all seemed ok for the short term.
Then my phone has started playing silly buggers. Freezing, icons not loading, a blank outline of the system area display appearing and not allowing access to the system area display pull down.
I have rebooted, left battery out for a while and rebooted, restored a back up and even used the system update though no luck. I am assuming it was this as it ocured after installing the iBlack theme and doing this.
I tried reinstalling the locales as noted above though couldn't find them basically. Any suggestions please guys.

Stephen

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I too had deleted my /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive file and had the same symptom as many others have mentioned in this forum. The difference is that I was able to regenerate the file without having to flash the device, and the benefit is that the newly regenerated file is only 1.2 MB instead of 28.4 MB.

1) create /etc/locale.gen, the contents of the file should look something like:

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

2) run the following command as root:

locale-gen

3) You should now see a new /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive that is much smaller than the one that got deleted

4) I also ran the following command as root, although I do not know if it is necessary or not:

setlocale

5) reboot

6) enjoy

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Thanks to the guys who went there first.

I dove in on this (after installing backupMenu, of course)

and moved a bunch of the locale cruft off to backups,
rebooted into the system with messed up displays etc.

I did not need to reflash - the key files are:

/usr/lib/locale/locale-archive (only this single file here - the big one)
and
/usr/share/locale/locale.alias (very important for Hildon+etc I guess?)
/usr/share/locale/-whatever-locales-you-use/LC_MESSAGES/*

when you run locale-gen you are working from the files in
/usr/share/i18n to generate your locale
For those who are not squeamish about it you can directly edit
those (like putting en_GB to having ISO-8601 maybe- my try
and so far no problems - It does look like most of the garbled
date-time formats are hard-coded into the widgets/apps/etc).


First this:
not sure if you need the --reinstall
(- I think I forgot to use --reinstall)

then this:

set locale seems to be unnecessary from what I can see :)

The result is confirmed

that most of the locale-archive file is non-critical bloatware
designed for people on different planets (from wherever you are:D).

thanks guys..

and a big thank you to a guy on the forum who I do not know
but has put a lot of good information out at
http://www.sumoudou.org/Non-Sumou.html

which is where I started from

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I just had the same problem, but this thread saved me from flashing.
But I had to slightly change the contents of /etc/locale.gen because the UTF-8 part is not in the locales directory names (anymore?). So mine looks like this:

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I wanted to comment for maybe future reference.

I too had screwed up my locale files with all the moveroot scripts and all.

I read the first page of this thread and thought my only option was to flash, and right before flashing I read the second page (doh!) but unfortunately nothing seemed to work.

Im not very good at linux, more than what i have learned with the n900 for the past year 1/2, so I started to look up what exactly happened and why locale-gen and the other ideas from here were not working, and I came to realize that mooveroot.sh moves everything to /home/usr/share/locale and the move-to-root.sh moves everything to /opt and creates a symlink to that file.

so by deleting the /usr/share/locale file and doing as root
ln -s /home/usr/share/locale /usr/share/locale
/reboot

it all worked, maybe I am the only one that this has ever happened to, but I guess if its not, then maybe this post will help you.

like i said, im not linux savvy at all, and was almost considering reflashing, so finding this out by myself was a big achievement :P lol

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

after installing locales in regional settings after changing chose 1st option in confirmation menu that pops up. You N900 will restart and then be normal .It worked for me.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I have the same problem

Example is my clock says "wdgt_va_24h_time"

i tried the methods posted, but locale-archive

wont generate

even after reinstalling locales

when changing regions from algeria to US it doesnt save, it just reboots and nothing happens

also i got in the predicament by installing fassms + fastsmsevo and uninstalling mscim

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

the reason its not changing regions is cause theres no language packs installed.

can someone upload a locale-archive for enUS

or tell me why its not regenerating

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

got it, i was just missing a locale.nopurge

now the locale-archive has been regenerated

thanks to 009N

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

same problem ; any help please ;
i don't know how to reflash my N900 .
Anything else to try ???

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

You do not have to reflash if you would consider all hints that are contained in the forum, but if you want to, all the info is here.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphot...47657614_n.jpg

somehow got lost when i uninstaled android with automatic uninstaler so all the titles are now ****ed up, for instance the clock shows wdgt_va_24h_time instead of the actual time....

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

exactly me too

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Please try this http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=17
Please make sure to have the correct localizations in the file.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

I'm a noob sorry but I run local-gen

/home/user # locale-gen

and I get

/bin/sh: locale-gen: not found

any ideas?

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

To fix the locale issue.

Reinstall posix-locales package using:
Once this package is installed.
You can check the list of available locales using:
Make a note of locale that you will be using.
By default utf-8 locales aren't used. But I think they should be safe to use.
Open /etc/osso-af-init/locale using nano or leafpad.

Make sure that the locale is filled as above.
I am using en_IN and en_GB both.
But for you it might just en_GB, en_US or different.

Once you have made sure that it's filled and is in the available list, restart the phone.
After restart, check the regional/language settings again in the phone by accessing phone settings.

I hope this helps.

Cheers!!!
StarkWiz

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Thanks for this. Something (not quite sure what) caused my locale file here to be a 0-length file. locale-gen and the like were not fixing the issue and I was a hair away from a reflash before I saw this.

I'm thinking I may still do a reflash, since I'm not sure what else may have been borked (and its been a couple years since I did a reflash). But at least right now I have a working system again and can do the reflash on my own time.

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

could someone upload the locales folder?

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Thanks but it dit not work for me. The 1.2MB file locale-archive has been generated correctly (using fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8 in my case) but I still have the same problems (everything like "wdgt_va_24h_time" instead of the normal time...). Did I miss something? (setlocale didn't change anything).

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Hi,for this folder we talk about
http://dox.bg/files/dw?a=8193a6ac18

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

thanks, it works (I couldn't reinstall posix-locales)

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

Hi, I have also managed to create this problem while attempting to free up some space on Rootfs.

However when i try apt-get install locales the process aborts due to "broken pipe" error, which I assume is because some of locales still exists in the phone.

Any suggestions how to resolve the install issue? I hope to avoid reflashing as it seems now the process takes us a longway back in history and many things have been modified, degraded, expired since the latest flash image.

thanks

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

You should have made a backup before playing with nand.

A general approach to save your system would be:

Make a backup now.

Mount your latest known to work backup you made and diff/restore/fix the files concerning locales.

If you dont have ever made a backup since 2013
you can try to use "The Lazy Approach"
https://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_firmware as a reference.

Maybe make a backup after you fixed it again ;)

Re: Borked Again - Freed Up Rootfs Space - Now N900 in Foreign Language - Help Please!
 

ended up reflashing. The device probably needed it anyhow after several years of playing around. most stuff is working only struggling with my ms exchange email account....