If you connect the N900 to a computer via USB frequently, you will sooner or later encounter this error where the N900 will refuse to be used as external media.

This is because a program (or programs) is accessing files in the /home/user/MyDocs folder. To fix the problem, the program(s) in question needs to be found and stopped. To find the program(s), open a root terminal and type

 lsof | grep MyDocs

This will display the programs accessing the MyDocs folder something similar to this:

Nokia-N900-42-11:~# lsof | grep MyDocs
sh        3474       user  cwd    DIR      179,1    65536       4326 /home/user/MyDocs/tmp

The second column displays the process-ID of the program (in RED above). Now, terminate the program with this command (repeat for multiple programs):

kill 3474

Now, run the lsof command again (press UP arrow to go back) and make sure the program is not displayed. If it is still running, execute this:

kill -9 3474

Reconnect the USB cable and you should now be able to use the N900 as external media.

On the N900, it is possible to run a terminal program like ‘top’ directly from the Desktop/Shortcut. The following example creates a shortcut to launch the system monitior program ‘top’.

1. Use a text-editor like vi or Leafpad to create a file with the following text:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=0.1
Type=Application
Terminal=true
Name=topx
Exec=/usr/bin/osso-xterm top
Icon=
X-Window-Icon=
X-HildonDesk-ShowInToolbar=true
X-Osso-Type=application/x-executable

2. Save the file as topx.desktop.

3. As root, copy the file to the ‘/usr/share/applications/hildon/’ directory. This will create an ugly blue application icon in the Application list called ‘topx’.

Launching ‘topx’ will execute ‘top’ directly in xterm. You may now put a shortcut on the desktop for quick access. The not-so-great part of this desktop-shortcut is that it displays the default icon.