[maemo-developers] Location of /home, /tmp and /var folder kills tablet device in a couple of months

[From: Oliver]

Hello,

The /home, /tmp and /var folders are stored on the small internal 256 MB flash device.
This is a problem, because writing to a flash device very often kills the device.

The main problem here are for example the Browser Cache and E-mail directory in /home
and other data that is stored in /tmp or /var.
This data all result in many write accesses to the internal flash device and in the long term this will have the result that the Tablet can't store new data on the internal flash device which makes the tablet useless.

The bad thing about this is, that you can't replace this internal 268 MB flash device by a new one.

So, i suggest to move the /var, /tmp and /home folders (and any other folder with very variable data) to the flash SD memorycards because they can be replaced anytime by new ones when they get unfunctional someday.
(for the N810 only the flash card in the external slot can be replaced)

So the /etc/fstab needs to be changed and filesystem on the external SD card needs also to be changed from vfat to something more suitable for a linux os.
So something like JFFS2 or ext2/3.


An experienced user might be able to do these changes on its own but unskilled tablet users won't be able to do this.
So this change should be made primarly by the maemo project itself.
That's why i suggest this change here on the mailinglist.

What's your opionion about this topic, changing the /home /tmp and /var folder location to a location 
on a SD flash memorycard that can be replaced?

Some people, especially N810 user might want to use their only external SD slot for exchanging data between a camera instead of using it for the system /home and /var folders.
So this might be a small price loosing this feature but you win by a tablet device with a lot longer lifetime.
Hint: 
Here does also a small solution exist for those people.
It should be possible to put the USB port of the N810 device in host mode, so that those people can 
connect a SD flash memory reader USB stick to the N810 device.


Regards, 
 Oliver

 




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