[HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

Here's a simple howto for those suffering from lack of space in rootfs:

The first one is more of a temporary matter, for example to get enough space to install an update, but it's also the fastest and easiest.

1. Disable extras-testing and extras-devel and third party repositories

Simply check the disabled box and save in the Application Manager's catalogues menu. wait for app manger to update the lists.
Of course this only helps if you actually had these repositories enabled.

Disabling extras-testing and extras-devel will (currently) give you an extra 11.5Mb in rootfs

2. Reinstall python

This one is a bit more work, but gives you around 20Mb.
If you installed a python application (for example FM Radio, Quicknote, Witter) before python was optified, you need to reinstall python. This will uninstall your python applications, so you will need to reinstall them after you're done. For this you need rootsh which is in extras.

check that app manger is not running
open xterm
type the following commands:

sudo gainroot
apt-get remove python

This will prompt if you really want to do it and give a list of things that will be removed. It's good to check the list so you know which applications are going to be uninstalled.

then these commands:
apt-get remove python2.5
apt-get remove python-osso
apt-get autoremove
apt-get clean

I think I manually installed python-osso on my device, so that one might just say that it's not installed.

After that is done open application manager and reinstall the python applications. The new optified version of python will be automatically installed with them. Try with FM Radio for example.

Do this instead (Thanks @rewt):
When the program is installed, type df -h in the xterm to see if it worked.
The output should now contain these lines at the end:
Scroll up to see rootfs status. It should hopefully have more space now.

3. Moving apt cache to home.

This is a more risky fix that could lead to some problems. However it works for me.

This fix is required to be able to install large programs with apt.

in xterm type these commands:
This should free up a couple of Mb. It depends on what repositories you have and if you have been using apt.

There's a wiki page with this information too:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

I've been hacking pretty vigorously at the roofs problem and have a couple of other things that can be done too. Should I post the more risky stuff here or would it be wiser to stick to the safe stuff?

My own goal was to get more than 50Mb with all my repositories enabled, and I got to 49Mb with the above fix. (I have a few third party repositories too)

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

I'd love to see a proper port of localepurge... I'm currently using the version hacked to use pcregrep, instead. Localepurge frees up a nice 15 MBs' worth of locales that I will never use. (And it continues to free up space by purging locales after a program is installed.)

But the problem with the currently available, it assumes the user is using en_GB and, by default, only chooses to keep: en, en_GB and en_US locales.

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

http://wiki.maemo.org/Free_up_rootfs_space

"a bit" rough but there it is

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

I haven't bothered with that one yet, but yeah, it would be nice.

One thing that worries me a little is the icon-cache. I mean that effectively limits the amount of apps you can have in the repository afaict.

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

@Flandry, Perhaps a link to that wiki page could be added to the Sticky FAQ?

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

Thanks guys. I've been looking for a safe place to direct people in the sticky. A description of how to cut and paste a shell script to optify their entire root just didn't make the cut. :D

If anyone is going to add to the wiki, please make sure to divide it into basic and advanced sections and clearly post a suitably specific and dire warning at the transition.

Edit: ha, you beat me by 10 s. ;)

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

Is it possible to create a script that lists 'odd' things in rootfs? Maybe compare the current rootfs to a reference list? Is that doable? Or isn't the rootfs filelist (mostly) the same for each device?

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

@qwerty12, is that the version you are using on n900?http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=24564

Re: [HOWTO] Freeing up rootfs space
 

I put together a quick script last night... It'll check any packages that aren't dependencies of mp-fremantle-*-pr (which should exclude most of the pre-installed packages) to see if they place any files in /opt - if they don't it'll let you know that [package_name] isn't optified.

Just copy this code into a file on your device and in x-term type ". ./filename" in the directory the file is in, and you'll get a list of packages that may be a problem. If you see something you don't remember installing, it's probably best to ignore it (as it may be a system package, see below for the reason why).

In another version, I made an attempt at enumerating the entire dependency tree for mp-fremantle-*-pr, but it was too time consuming (after 20 minutes, it was still tracing dependencies). Because the script above doesn't know about every system package, there may be a few packages reported that are system packages and not user installed - most of the noise should be filtered, however.

If you find this useful, feel free to thank me by using this "Thanks!" link :)