[phreakwenci]

any easy way to do this?

[bruinsrme]

When starting up Snapature a pop up stated I had low system memory.
With backgrounder I held down the home button to close all the programs that may have been running

[reddawg]

The system folder is located on the root partition, which is only 500MB. Since the firmware for your iPhone 3G (2.x) is stored in the /root partition, it doesn't leave a lot of room for other things. For example Cydia jailbroken apps are installed in the root partition.

BigBoss has a utility called "BossTools" found in the Cydia installer that moves all your applications, system fonts and a few other things to the larger partition (/private/var).

I have a iPhone 3G running firmware 2.1 and have installed BossTools and have moved all my apps, fonts from /root to /private/var and everything works fine. After running "BossTools", I now have 165MB free on my /root partition.

For those interested in how it works, it moves the apps, fonts to the new location on /private/var and then creates symlinks (like shortcuts) in the original folder that point to the new location. If you know anything about Unix or Linux, you will understand.

Note: Another method for those who jailbreak, is to use PwnageTool and increase the size of the root partition so it is bigger than 500MB. I think BigBoss' BossTool is safe and works fine, but the choice is yours.

[phreakwenci]

So just install boss tools and move to the private/var and that's it?

UPDATE: installed boss tools, it already said that the apps were moved as well as ringtones, but not fonts, so I moved those... but it says I've still only got 131 of 500mb free memory... soo... what's next?

[Zwayne]

Build a custom ipsw with a bigger root partition...

[bruinsrme]

So if it moves all the apps, ringtones and fonts whats left in that folder?

[reddawg]

So if it moves all the apps, ringtones and fonts whats left in that folder?

Your firmware is quite large. The firmware by itself can take up between 232MB and 300MB. To find what else is taking up your space, connect from your desktop to your iPhone using 'ssh' and use the 'find' command.

To search for all files that are greater than 1MB in file size, from the root directory down to all sub directories. Execute the find command as

find / -size +1000k -print

[461am]

Just to clarify something posted above. Cydia apps are not saved in the root directory, they're saved in /var.
The / links are just shortcuts.

This happens automatically the first time you run cydia.

[Miro89]

are you sure that bosstools is 100% safe for the iPhone because i have read posts saying that people had their iPhones stuck in the apple logo after installing bosstools and couldn't solve except by dfu mode and restoring.

[ripped53]

I've got the same problem. Only 51MB left out of 500MB. BossTools says everything is already relocated. Beside creating a new ipsw, what other options are there?

[461am]

WHY do you need this space?

[Miro89]

hi, if i installed bosstools and it freed up my system memory and then i installed new apps and games do i have to run bosstools again so it moves the new apps and games to /private/var? and has anyone reported a problem with bosstools plz reply!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ripped53]

Originally Posted by 461am

WHY do you need this space?

I continue ti get error messages saying I'm running out memory and I some apps crass continuously.

[GenesisDH]

Originally Posted by ripped53

I continue ti get error messages saying I'm running out memory and I some apps crass continuously.

My iPhone consistently shows my root partition to have ~40MB of space free, and I hardly get error messages unless I've used a ton of apps before I restart my phone.

System RAM and system storage are not the same. Those memory messages are related to the RAM running low.
IIRC, the iPhone doesn't have a swap file (that emulates RAM in storage space), so it wouldn't matter how much root partition space exists. This appears to be true because no rc file exists in /etc/ (the rc file determines the location of a swap file in MacOSX and many *nix/*bsd systems). So the iPhone only operates on RAM for memory.

Besides, a swap file on a flash memory chip isn't good, since flash & some SSD memory have a limited number of write/overwrite cycles before corruption begins to occur (swap files are rewritten constantly during use). I'm sure that's why Apple didn't implement swap files in the iPhoneOS.

Do you restart your phone often? Restarting the phone occasionally will help with memory issues.

[ripped53]

Originally Posted by GenesisDH

Do you restart your phone often? Restarting the phone occasionally will help with memory issues.

Every single day and even more when the iphone crashes