maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Repartitioning the Nokia N9

amonk	2013-12-24 , 02:47
Posts: 5 \| Thanked: 3 times \| Joined on Dec 2013 @ cipher	#8

This is my first post here. I've googled my way here many times, looking for some N900 or N9 detail or another in a hurry, but I don't like to have to make web accounts to participate (total nuisance + anti-freedom). I obviously broke down and made an account to post this though, as I've been working on exactly this for a few days now. I've long had an N900 (2 actually), followed by an N9 as well, and never started doing as much as I'd have liked with them until recently (for various pathetic reasons) :( I'm so late digging in deep that it's really a major pain now, considering how Nokia double shafted us loyal, high-end, "phree phonix" customers and all. All the resources I expected to be available are fragmented, broken and/or gone. It's a real spit in the face after having spent some $1800 on their [nice] **** in the last fourish years. Dicks! Oh, what could have been... Real tragedy and all that. Anyway, most of the "docs" for this stuff at least half suck, all Winblows perspective ruined and so on too. And, in this case, they all say "hexaboot" and ****, but then use Nemo's moslo initrd to repartition a SINGLE extra partition (which, of course lamely prevents all the hexaboot boasting). I like things proper and comprehensive. Anyway, here's my N9 filesystem config so far (as seen from my notebook), but I'm not really happy with it yet. I'll probably redo/modify it at least once over the next few days (I haven't laid OSs onto the partitions yet - I did, however, temporarily install Nitdroid into /home/nitdroid [blech!]).

Code:

[root@zardoz] ~/Nokia-N9> parted /dev/sdb unit s print
Model: Linux File-CD Gadget (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 125255680s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start       End         Size        Type      File system  Flags
 1      1024s       10486783s   10485760s   primary   fat32        lba
 4      10486784s   112672767s  102185984s  extended               lba
 5      10487808s   18876415s   8388608s    logical   ext4
 6      18877440s   27266047s   8388608s    logical   ext4
 7      27267072s   35655679s   8388608s    logical   ext4
 8      35656704s   44045311s   8388608s    logical   ext4
 9      44046336s   52434943s   8388608s    logical   ext4
10      52435968s   112672767s  60236800s   logical   ext4
 2      112672768s  121061375s  8388608s    primary   ext4
 3      121061376s  125255679s  4194304s    primary   ext4

Partition assignments are;

p1, Meego MyDocs, 5GiB
p2, Meego /, 4GiB
p3, Meego /home, 2GiB
p5, Debian, 4GiB
p6, Nemo Mobile, 4GiB
p7, Sailfish OS, 4GiB
p8, Firefox OS, 4GiB
p9, Nitdroid, 4GiB
p10, shared space, 28.7GiB

And I made the filesystems as follows (suggestions for better, minimal risk eMMC tuning improvements welcome).

Code:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdbX -I 128 -E discard -G 32 -L LabelX -O flex_bg,^huge_file
tune2fs -E mount_opts=journal_async_commit -o discard,acl,user_xattr /dev/sdbX

I patched parted 2.4 (the last version to support filesystem operations like resize, etc.) for a gets bug, introduced via more modern gnulibs, and compiled it on my notebook for said purpose (that moslo initrd "one trick resize pony" was out of the question [though I did examine its autopartition.sh script a bit] -- and it isn't really a "partition resizing wizard" [lol] anyway, y'all; it's a bootloader, at least ostensibly!). What tool abuse?! Besides, I didn't want to be stuck working in some ramdisk anyway. I considered lots of options before fixing up an old parted on my notebook, but that seemed the best approach for me.

The only thing that's really still annoying me is partition alignment. I'm setting this all up via sectors (so, no spooky, automagic hand holding crap) and, unfortunately, the N9 reports insufficient alignment info...

Code:

cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/alignment_offset = 0
cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/mmcblk0p1/alignment_offset = 0
cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/mmcblk0p2/alignment_offset = 0
cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/mmcblk0p3/alignment_offset = 0
cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/physical_block_size = 512
cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/logical_block_size = 512
cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/minimum_io_size = 512
cat /sys/block/mmcblk0/queue/optimal_io_size = 0

...and it's still unhappy with some of the partitions even using 512 byte fallback divisibility. And, of course, my notebook and the N9 itself give different surface lies about its qeometry as well. So, essentially, all "authoritative" information sources are either withholding essential info, lying about it, or both. (lol) If anyone knows its preferred offset information, I'm ready to move on, but I'll keep banging my head as necessary, of course. :) What an unnecessary, largely inexcusable hassle. I don't want to automagic pray it into approximate place. I want to put it *exactly* where I want it via accurate information! Guess I'm unreasonable in 2013, eh (news flash - lol).

Also, I'll almost certainly switch that MyDocs partition to ext4 at some point soonish, (vfat? really? blech!) and maybe combine it with /home. I'd like to change its stupid Winblows originated name too, but I'd have to dig around for lots of hardcoded breakage first, and maybe never find it all. Ug. And I'd like to put the three original filesystems into a sane order too; root first, of course. Vfat MyDocs (double blech!) is partition one?!!1111 Really? What kind of Winblows cretins did they have designing on this thing? I love it, warts and all, of course, but this stuff is downright offensive to the sensibilities. And don't even let me start on that aegis Treacherous Computing BS. Grr!!!!!

Anyway, sorry I blathered and bitched so much along the way here, but I've built up a lot of issues all isolated in my cave over the years. lol ;)

L8r -K

Last edited by amonk; 2013-12-24 at 04:00. Reason: Errors, some my fault, most this gdam website timing out my session! Grr.

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