Top 12 Maemo N900 Issues & Fixes

Question

With all the same questions and issues that keep coming up, thought this would be good to have as a reference in one place for use to refer to.
These are the basics that we reiterate over and over, so of course there are many other codes for xterm and such that are not listed, but just the basics.
Hope it helps us all! 
Top 12 Meamo Issues-
Repositories
Basic X-Terminal Commands
OVI Suite Vs. PC Suite
Skype
Nokia Messaging
Flashing/Re-Flashing OS & Vanilla
NITDroid
E-Mail Speed-Up (Modest Fix)
Office Products - FREE
Custom Ringtones for Contacts & MMS
FM Transmitter Fix
Instructions - Step-by-step guide:
The NEED for SPEED -
Speeding up your N900
(edited by Nokia: Thanks for this ceroberts75 - I'm not sure if these really are the top questions that N900 users have (I'm using one and I have no idea what some of this stuff means but I trust this will help many so we'll kep this as a sticky for now. Cheers / vandelay)
Attachments:
Top 12 Meamo Issues.txt ‏21 KB

Answer 1

6.  Flashing & re-flashing Meamo OS & Vanilla
Post: /t5/Maemo-Devices/backlight-issues/m-p/742235#M16991
HERE FOR DIRECTIONS TO FLASH YOUR N900
you will need to be sure that you have a non-64 bit pc.
1. Download the Flasher
2. Download the latest firmware image for your N900  (you will need your IMEI of the device)
3. when you save the global variant of the firmware to the "flasher-3.5" folder, save it as "pr1.2.bin"
4.  When you save the vanilla file of the firmware to the "flasher-3.5" folder, save it as "vanilla.bin"
5.  Turn your phone off
6.  launch the flasher-3.5 program
7.  type this command:   flasher-3.5.exe -F pr1.2.bin -f
it will then scroll a bunch of gibberish and then say it is looking for a unit.
8. 
with the phone still off, hold slide the kb open and hold the "U"
button while you connect the usb cable to the phone.  continue holding
the "U" until you see the faint "NOKIA" logo and/or the USB connection
symbol in the top right.  The flasher will find the device and
automatically flash the unit to the original rom
9.  after about 1.5 minutes, it will be complete.  DO NOT DISCONNECT YOUR UNIT!
10.  type this command:   flasher-3.5.exe -F vanilla.bin -f -R
11.  now it should reflash the device and wipe the emmc clean of EVERYTHING.  after it reboots, you can disconnect it.
before
you load any software into the device via restoring from your backup,
be sure to try the backlight settings again and see if it is still
having the issue.
if the issue is gone then there
was some software that you had installed that was affecting it.   if the
issue is still there, then have your device replaced.
if the issue is resolved, then a couple of things.
1. 
depending on how many applications you had installed, you can go back
and install them one at a time and re-sync your contacts/calendar
separately.  or you can do a restore from your back up.
when
you do the restore, be sure that you look at all the applications in
the list that it is going re-download and install before you allow it
to, to be sure they are the only applications you want.
7.  NITDroid
Post: /t5/Maemo-Devices/nitdroids/m-p/745673#M17325
To install:
  open xterm (be sure you have roostsh installed and your extras-devel repo is enabled)
  sudo gainroot
  apt-get install nitdroid-installer
  nitdroid (this will take a while, at least 20 minutes on wifi)
After install, to be sure that the correct packages are installed:
  apt-get install kernel-power kernel-power-settings
  dpkg -i /home/user/MyDocs/.nitdroid/multiboot-kernel-power_0.3_armel.deb (if you get a message to install a previous version from 0.3-1 to 0.3, type "n")
  apt-get install kernel-power-bootimg
  apt-get install multiboot-kernel-power
  apt-get install nano-opt (this will be needed if you are going to over-clock the kernel, and will save a few steps later)
  apt-get upgrade (just to be sure you have all the most current packages for the above.  type "y" if need be)
Then reboot with slider up.
You should now see this:
1 - Meamo 2.6.28-omap1 (choose this if you want your standard Kernel)
2 - Maemo kernel-power40 (choose this if you want your Over-clocking Titan's Kernel)
3 - NITDroid 2.6.28.NIT.06 on mmcblk1p2 (choose this if you want to use NITDroid)
To Over-clock the NITDroid Kernel:
(must be done from the Maemo side with xterminal)
  open xterm
  root
  mount /dev/mmcblk1p2 /and  (you may need to create the /and directory.  use:  mkdir /and)
  nano /and/system/etc/power.conf (you may need to install nano first.  use this code:  apt-get install nano-opt )
Then scroll down to the:
scaling_max_freq    (900000) for 900mhz
scaling_min_freq    (500000) for 500mhz
When done making your changes:
  ctrl+O ("oh")
  enter
Then the xterm will be back at the curser.
  umount /and (you may get an error saying "sh..unmount not...", just type reboot and it will do the same thing.)
NOTE: For the suggested clocking speeds and skip speeds settings go to - http://forum.nitdroid.com/index.php?topic=116.0
DONE!  You are now over-clocked in NITDroid!
To uninstall:
If the NITDroid is installed on a partition of your memory card, then just reformat the card.
Then to get rid of the Multiboot
  open xterm
  sudo gainroot
  apt-get remove multiboot multiboot-extras nano-opt
or
  dpkg -r multiboot multiboot-extras nano-opt