Hmmm.
A single Nand partition would be really helpful, I think. I am not sure how to do it. Guylhem, you can, I take it?
what I was thinking was offloading home and usr and opt and modules (so far) and ironing out the symlinks. What I did was off load and link QtPalmtop /usr/bin /usr/lib /lib/modules (kind of a pain ) and /opt
As far as pulling sharp pim and qt mail and opera-that is some of the 1st stuff I did. (installed Ko/pi kapi and ompi instead..and opera 7.55 and opie libs and advancedfm and Konsole w/ tabs suport..and still had about 28 megs free in internal flash when done) It helps, but squeezing in a good set of modules with the multiple partition scheme still wasn't going--they had to be offloaded--and all the links made tracing where stuff was expected into a a bit of a nightmare.
A thought, though. If we went with a single nand partition..loaded modules and /libs and /bin there (there should be enough room for that, I think--even if a complete modules pack is about a meg as an uncompressed tarball). Then partitioned the sd and mounted /home /opt /usr /var on sd partitions we could straighten out a lot of the links and make it look more like a linux box. If partitioning seems too much. we could just link the directories back, like I've been trying to do. This could be setup to leave the Z as a working pda when there is no sd, and as a "real" linux box when there is, maybe?
Could the sd stuff be scripted? asin determine if an sd card is loaded, if it has the dirs required and linking to those dirs? So for example /home might be a link that either points to /homenand or /homesd depending on whether the card is in?
As far as backup goes...
what are you backing up? if it is a full system, nothing could be easier than doing a nand backup and tarballing the stuff on sd. If it is just files, I think there are plenty of options available, and that moving stuff around for reasons of space and sanity shouldn't cause a problem. In fact, it should make things easier.
What is intended here, I think is a definite change in the "real" filesystem without much impact on what the Z "thinks" is the filesystem. That is really the issue... the z "thinks it has a straightforward linux fs and instead it has a tangled web of links that imitates one. Straightening things out shouldn't affect compatibilty-- it should just make the fs more open, and less crazed---and much much more expandable.
In short then, definitely! I want to get this thing headed in the right direction.
ps. it would seem that the squashfs module fro the pdaXrom feed kernel and tools (?) ipk works though I pulled it out of the ipk and popped the stuff in place manually).
I haven't used it for anything, but it loads without complaint..same w/ mksquashfs. could be helpful. Also could mean that mazlovsky's dev_img 1.6 could be installed on a 6k, as well as the wikipedia stuff.
