@rainemak et al, some comments from my side WRT discussing to expand the root volume size of all SailfishOS flashing images to 4000 MByte.
08:05:08 <rainemak> #topic Increased root partition size on older devices (5mins – asked by jojomen)
08:05:20 <rainemak> #info <jojomen> <Content of @jojomen’s post above>
…
08:06:18 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> Let’s start from the problem. We’d like to first understand how
08:06:20 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> people end up running out space. What’s causing it? There shouldn’t
08:06:22 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> be anything blocking to increase root partition size for older
08:06:24 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> devices but only for flashable image (no resizing during upgrade).
08:06:26 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> Something similar that we did for newer devices.
For almost a decade, I do not comprehend why this seems to be so hard to understand, because I ran into this issue with every device since the original Jolla phone (which did not have a fixed sized root volume due to BTRFS); this is why I developed and documented the aforementioned section of my SailfishOS installation guide on how to expand the root volume afterwards.
When Jolla released their SailfishOS flashing image for Xperia 10 II with a 4000 MByte root volume (v4.1.0 in April 2021) and later the one for Xperia 10 III, too, I assumed Jolla would have finally understood the issues the tiny root volume causes; apparently that was a misinterpretation on my side. A bit of a conundrum is since 2021, why Jolla has increased the root volume size for Xperia 10 II & III flashing images, but refrains to do that for older, supported models.
08:06:30 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> There are few scenarios that are easy to foresee / understand.
08:06:32 <rainemak> #info <Jolla>
08:06:54 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> … Of course, also just installing tons of apps.
Well, what Jolla may call “tons of apps” (because there are only very few in the Jolla Store) is just 50 to 150 in my case. Additionally a couple of command line tools from Jolla’s repository: bash
, less
, screen
and some more. Two examples to visualise the issue:
a. (on the left) @ohnonot’s Xperia XA2 on SailfishOS 4.5.0 with just a few apps installed and the original root volume size (2500 MBytes).
b. (on the right) My old Xperia X on SailfishOS 3.2.1 with ca. 150 apps installed, additionally couple of command line tools provided by Jolla and expanded root volume size (4000 MBytes).
No debug info and dumped cores on both, but if you add up the 1500 MByte SailfishOS (including some additional tools), 375 MByte AlienDalvik (based on AOSP 11) and 500 MByte apps, these 2375 MByte leave just 125 MByte free on the original root volume size and are half of the 10% free filesystem capacity usually suggested as “manoeuvring space” for a filesystem to work well. It then takes some accumulated system log files or transient data during the mass installation of RPM files in the course of a SailfishOS upgrade to cause “no space left on root volume”.
The most common effect this has, is that SailfishOS upgrades fail: After downloading the aggregated RPMs and triggering the upgrade procedure, the device reboots to “upgrade mode”, starts to install the upgrade and then the progress bar hangs forever shortly before reaching 100%. After that the SailfishOS installation may be defunct (i.e. does not fully boot to the desktop / “launcher”), boot successfully and the old release seems to be installed, or boots successfully and the new release seems to be installed, but only partially is. There is no indication what went wrong (besides the upgrade process obviously did stall) and that the reason was “no space left on root volume”. One has to know to read and how to interpret /var/log/systemupdate.log
to comprehend the reason. Jolla usually advises to reflash SailfishOS after an SailfishOS upgrade failed multiple times or if a SailfishOS installation misbehaves, which temporarily resolves the situation until the user installs the software (s)he had installed before.
A root volume size of 4000 MByte provided by all SailfishOS flashing images (i.e. for all supported models) would at least alleviate this issue for users which follow Jolla’s advice to reflash.
Side note: It would be really helpful, if the SailfishOS updater displays an error message, at least for the most common failure modes (among them “no space left on root volume”), instead of just letting the progress bar cease to progress. To keep displaying a progress bar when an unrecoverable error occurred is rather disguising what happened.
08:07:28 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> … For time being maybe we just adjust
08:07:30 <rainemak> #info <Jolla> root partition for the older devices – …
Please do so!
And please do avoid requiring 6 years again (from 2015 to 2021) to extend the present solution (since 2021) to the whole set of supported devices.