NotEnoughSpace is yours to test

[Cyansmoker]

Download .apk

Note #1: your phone needs to be ROOTED to use this application.
Note #2: so far, only tested on Droid Incredible.

From the built-in help:

About this application

This application's goal is to help you understand and possibly work around a common vexation of using Android; i.e. these messages:

"not enough space"
"Low on space. Application data space is low."

What is happening?

You've checked your phone's vitals and it appears that it has plenty of space left, both internal storage and SD Card storage. So, what's happening?
Android allows your applications to store their data, primarily, in a dedicated partition whose size happens to be much smaller than even the phone's internal storage space. Generally south of 150 MBs.
This is the partition that fills up so quickly and that Android has been complaining about.

And the help goes on and on so I'll stop here.

The short version

Using this application, you can see which applications use up most of your phone's data space and decide what to do with them.
You can also move the biggest directories to the phone's SD Card.

Just give it a try and let me know!

-Chris.

 

[OFI]

Works fine on Desire and looks good.

I really hoped this was going to map the Apps2SD partition too. That would be a great help to me and probably lots of others.

Otherwise this is nicely laid out and does the job well.

 

[Cyansmoker]

Thanks, glad it works
App2SD: I suppose your are referring to the XDA script, not the application found in the market place. I am a bit unclear as to what exactly the script does. Does it relocate your whole app install directory to a dedicated partition on the SD Card?

 

[OFI]

Thanks, glad it works
App2SD: I suppose your are referring to the XDA script, not the application found in the market place. I am a bit unclear as to what exactly the script does. Does it relocate your whole app install directory to a dedicated partition on the SD Card?

Yes it allows you to use an ext2/3 partition on the SD so you can install a lot more apps. Internal storage is still used a little so the apps still works.
It does mean that when you go to 'Manage Applications' Android doesn't correctly report the size of the app because it sees an installed app as one total size regardless of where the data is held.

Your app appears to differentiate between the two and only show what is being stored on the internal memory which is a huge help. But it would be nice to see what is being used on the SD partition too.

Really though identifying the apps that are using up the internal storage is far more of an issue so i'm grateful for this app as it is. I should have made the Apps2SD partition larger!

 

[OFI]

Just noticed your app shows me as having 33MB free whilst Android reports only 16MB free.

 

[Cyansmoker]

Ah. You raise an interesting problem.
I expected some discrepancy but this is a bit much.

Thing is, I could report the same value as "df" does, but I chose to, instead, report df's total disk space minus the total disk usage as estimated by "du" when crawling through the partition.

Cons:
"du" performs an estimate of space used, rather than return a perfectly accurate value. That's because, on the one hand, it does not account for space wasted by files that are smaller than EXT2's minimal block size (I believe on Android it's 4k), and on the other hand, there is the space reserved for i-nodes.

Pros:
If I were to use "df" after you relocated a directory to the SD Card, df would return less space than is actually available. Not always, but often enough if the application using the files found in this directory is currently running. As long as these files are open, df will "see" them. "du" does not suffer from this limitation.

I guess I could improve the program by checking how big the blocks reserved for the i-node tables are and counting smaller files as being at least as big as the partition's block size. But this will make the app. much slower.

 

[meroupow]

for me I get:
NotEnoughSpace:
total: 147,6 MB Used 72,8 MB Free 74,9 MB
Database: 14,6 MB Files 22,2 MB
Preferences 482 kb Cache 1,6 MB


df gives me:
/data: 151168K total, 135108K used, 16060K free (block size: 4096)

it doesn't add up at all...

I have much less free than 74,9 MB (~15 MB), what is consuming this memory?

 

[Cyansmoker]

meroupow, I was checking the typical content of webviewCache/ and it contains many files that are quite under 4096 bytes in size. If you have been doing a lot of browsing with your phone, this may explain this big discrepancy.

 

[Cyansmoker]

Ok. If you do not mind, let's test that theory: please re-download the file from the same place. It's a new version that checks every single file on the partition and, when computing used space, adjusts their size based on minimum block size.

Cheers.

 

[OFI]

Installing the new version now to test.

Just a couple of notes whilst I wait:

*Long press an app to uninstall would be very useful
*Please give it an icon. I know it's a beta but I think I have OCD or something

 

[OFI]

Ok well this one reports 100MB free when I have closer to 20MB free and a vastly different selection of apps to the last version (highest showing only 4.1MB used and that's contacts)

 

[Cyansmoker]

Wow. Just wow. I know I put that one together fairly quick but...!
I believe I'm going to add a special debug screen so that we can find what is causing the app to be so confused.

 

[Cyansmoker]

and..done. I updated the application with a new menu ("Debug")
Do not click the "Clean up & reboot phone" it doesn't do anything at this point.
Simply select "Debug" and follow the on-screen instructions.
The whole email business is so that you can copy/paste from a desktop client.

 

[meroupow]

The new version gives me Bad Status Code #1002 on HTC Desire.

Debug info gives
1:/data/data: 151168K total, 131996K used, 19172K available (block size 4096)
2:71134 /data/data
3:4096/0/149657


the fact is du -sk * in /data directory gives me:
9219 /data/app
43976 /data/dalvik-cache
71134 /data

other folders are very small.

So the big differences I get with initial version of notenoughspace are due to the fact that it reports only on /data/data directory.

Interesting app, hope you will be able to fix it.

I find that a graphical interface for "du" unix command would be great as using the terminal on the phone is not very convenient.
but still it is the best command to understand the real folder sizes and where is the disk space consumed.

 

[Cyansmoker]

Actually, the line starting with "3:" tells me that your applications size is not correctly parsed.
Would you mind downloading the latest version (same link) and paste the debug info here again? There should be four lines, one of them showing an arbitrary file's info.

-C.

 

[adi19956]

says I have 183MB left... I have 185 in total... HTC Legend

 

[johnlgalt]

Just found this app. On my Motorola DROID, I got the following:

Total: 261.8MB Used: 74.8MB Free: 184.3MB
Database: 27.9MB Files: 9.0MB
Preferences: 20.6MB Cache: 17.4MB



df gives me the following:

/data: 268032K total, 218788K used, 49244K available (block size 4096)



More discrepancies. Debug info as follows:

Bad Status Code #1003

 

[meroupow]

Actually, the line starting with "3:" tells me that your applications size is not correctly parsed.
Would you mind downloading the latest version (same link) and paste the debug info here again? There should be four lines, one of them showing an arbitrary file's info.

-C.

hello here is the output with new version (I still get an error status code 1002)

1:sh
2:/data/data: 151168K total, 132784K used, 18384K available (block size 4096)
3:63129 /data/data
4:total 46
5:4096/0/149657

 

[Cyansmoker]

df gives me the following:

/data: 268032K total, 218788K used, 49244K available (block size 4096)

John,

If your Doid is configured like most phones, you should not be checking
"df /data"
but:
"df /data/data"

Thanks for the info,
-Chris.

ps: oh, and you should re-download the app; debug should not display an error #1003 anymore.

 

[Cyansmoker]

hello here is the output with new version (I still get an error status code 1002)

1:sh
2:/data/data: 151168K total, 132784K used, 18384K available (block size 4096)
3:63129 /data/data
4:total 46
5:4096/0/149657

Awww how fickle Android's shell syntax can be. I really do not like line #4.
I will do some more cleaning and re-upload a more "accepting" version tomorrow.

Thanks!
-C.

 

[johnlgalt]

Ahh, thanks Cyan. I'll get on it in a couple of days to re-compare using correct df parameters.

 

[johnlgalt]

I re-downloaded it again, ran it, and it gave me stupid NaN readings. For some odd reason the first time it runs it never gets around to asking for su privileges.

I went back to selection screen and ran Inspect and Optimize again, and this time it did ask for su privileges - but after allowing it I keep getting #1001 error codes.

 

[Cyansmoker]

Wow/Ouch.
John, since you seem comfortable with the shell, would you mind typing:

su
/data/data/com.voilaweb.mobile.notenoughspace/files/nes df /data/data
echo $?

And posting the output here?

Thanks again,
-Chris.

 

[johnlgalt]

permission on the file + df statement, (su is working)
echo = 127

 

[johnlgalt]

App is definitely getting permissions, I saw it when I first started it. However, even if I exit the app, every subsequent run never shows it asking for and receiving su privileges.

and this is what the output becomes every time:



Interestingly enough, when I use the back softkey to exit, it asks me if I want to exit the app - but it is not exiting, as seen here:



hence it only asking for su once. I'm gonna kill it and then re-start it and will get the su permissions notification showing it is definitely getting su privileges.

Ahh, it takes a bit of time before it actually gets out of memory - that is why this was happening - I went to kill it and it was already gone.



And the screen capture of the output when entering the commands in terminal:



Note this time it says 126 instead of 127.