How to fix dreaded "Out of space" issue when updating apps! - Android General

Ok, so there has been a LOT of people complaining that they are having issues updating certain apps. This seem to be happening mostly on Android 4.3 or 4.4. I too started having this issue so did a search for a fix, I found probably hundreds of threads across all the XDA forums without really finding any solutions. One of them points to a trick with a function of Lucky Patcher. That used to work but it seems the latest updates removed that feature. In most cases, clearing the data or removing updates does not seem to fix this issue either. Most threads will eventually end up saying to do a factory reset, not so. So I figured out why that is happening and thought that I would post it here for everyone to finally fix that annoying problem.
It seems like this is happening because Android is creating two data folders for that app and then when you try to update it, it tries to create another folder and the system wont let it. Therefor it is giving an out of space error. Not really an expert or proven reason but that is what it seems like to me, maybe somebody else can clarify, here is what will fix the error though.
Use a file explorer (I use Solid Explorer) and navigate to the root folder
Do a search for a small portion of the app name that you cant update. You will see several folders come up. They are most likely in /data/app-lib and are called appname-1 and appname-2. Some apps may have it by the developers name instead so make sure that it is the app that you are having issues with first.(example - tunein radios folder is called radiotime)
Delete both folders (notice - it would probably also delete the apps data too)
Go back to the play store and magically update!
Let me know if anyone else finds this useful as I have not seen this mentioned anywhere.

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[Q] Internal Storage Full Issue

So I check my Xoom out this morning and Boom "Low on Space 'Tablet storage space is getting low'. It is impossible that I filled all of the space. I looked at my breakup and i have about 6Gb of music and it says the rest is completely full due to applications. I look at my applications but I only have about 3GB worth of application and data attributed to saves (manually counting). For the most part, besides the stock honeycomb apps, these apps are the same that I have on my Droid1. Which has much smaller storage. Somehow some app is taking up all the space (which i can't identify), the OS is corrupted, or I have a virus. Everything else has been pretty mainstream applications.
I have the OTA update and my Xoom has never been rooted.
Is anyone else having this problem?
A lot of people got this issue. It is being discussed in the Motorola official Xoom forum. But still no one know what's the root cause.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
gogol said:
A lot of people got this issue. It is being discussed in the Motorola official Xoom forum. But still no one know what's the root cause.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the quick response. I guess its good to know I'm not the only one. Hopefully it gets fixed soon.
The link to the issue on the moto forums is
https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/46601?start=0&tstart=30
Hi Everyone,
For those users not yet experiencing this but wants to see whats going on, I made a video. There is also a way to check to see if this is occurring to you by checking out your internal storage on the Xoom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWFeq0Qj3iA
Is there anyone else experiencing this issue on their Xoom?
It happened to me last night while playing WordFeud. I get the two line message "Low on space" and "Tablet storage space is getting low"
There is no way that I am using 25 gig in applications.
Thanks,
Dan
My initial guess is that it is Application specific. My xoom has 628Mb for Applications. I think maybe some app that each of you is using is continuing to pull in data and not deleting it over time. Maybe something like a news stream or something else. I would chat with the others having this problem and see what similar apps you have.
Just a thought. Sounds odd, I agree.. but.. a place to start. Maybe akin to a memory leak.
Thanks for the quick reply, eaglecomm. Your suggestion makes sense. In looking around a little this morning, I see that some people thought it might be the Google Body app, which I had installed. I uninstalled it, but it didn't make a difference.
It turns out that there is a fix coming in the next update.
The thread is at the Motorola Owners Forum titled 'XOOM Storage is Full' problem - 47 apps takes up 27 GB?
Since I am a new member here, I cannot post the actual link.
I thought I would post this info for any other Xoom owners that are have this concern.
I am glad to see it is being addessed.
Thanks,
Dan
My Xoom is not indicating that it is low on storage, but the applications do seem to be taking up an inordinate amount of space. Funky little bug.
On a positive note, it is good to know that the functionality of this device will only get better over time.
Tombstones
Are any of you able to look at the sizes of the files in /data/tombstones? I had the same problem and did some digging and found a tombstone file that is 19 GB. It appears to have been generated by a browser crash. If any of you are having the problem can you open a terminal and go to /data/tombstones and find the biggest file and type cat (name of biggest file) and tell us the name of the process (listed after pid). You may need to be rooted and may need busybox for cat to work. I doubt it's only the browser... I'm curious to know if it's a honeycomb thing with how it tombstones app crashes.
Have you tried using a cache cleaner ? I use 1 Tap Cleaner and Fast Cache Cleaner .
Try using DiskUsage to view what is using up your storage. If you're rooted it gives you even more options to view specific folders. If you've ever used WinDirStat then this is the closest thing android has to it that I've found.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage
Although Moto is promising an update "soon" to fix this, the problem has been getting reported on for over 45 days now. Some people were hit with this early and some more recently - like myself. This one was sort of the last straw for me. I had to do a factory reset on mine (in Settings) in order to resolve this issue; which hasn't reared its ugly head again since. However, between that mess, and no SD card, SMS, etc, I finally got fed up and rooted mine so that I could use the Tiamat kernel and at least add a 32 GB SD card in the slot provided. Rooting also allowed for Clockwork Recovery (which I love) so making modifications is much easier. If and when Motorizon decides to provide us with the 4G update, then I'll flash it back to stock. However, in the right here and now, I needed a tablet for my work and didn't have the luxury to sit around with my hands tied and wait for Moto to finally have pity on us and provide what they hyped us with. The XOOM has become too integral a part of my work and home life. The product answered a lot of needs - some I didn't even realize that I had. I'll just have to do the extra step now of flashing back to stock when (and if) update time finally comes around. Until then, I'm moving forward and I've got WORK to do!! Yippee kyy-yaayyyy!!
I have this problem and looked in my folders trying to find large files using ES File Explorer. I have found a repeating set of folders here:
/sys/module/usbhid/drivers/hid:generic-usb/module/drivers/hid:generic-usb/module
These folders keep going and going and going. I tried to look at the properties of the sys/module folder but the file size kept going and going and going. I ran it all night and it was still running in the morning at 1.25GB and counting. Is it safe to delete the repeating set of folders? Does anyone know what these folders are used for?
Deanne
DeanneJensen said:
I have this problem and looked in my folders trying to find large files using ES File Explorer. I have found a repeating set of folders here:
/sys/module/usbhid/drivers/hid:generic-usb/module/drivers/hid:generic-usb/module
These folders keep going and going and going. I tried to look at the properties of the sys/module folder but the file size kept going and going and going. I ran it all night and it was still running in the morning at 1.25GB and counting. Is it safe to delete the repeating set of folders? Does anyone know what these folders are used for?
Deanne
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looks to me like a recursive bug where the folder or device is continually being created inside itself, it would cause everything from unstable os to complete unresponsiveness and even filling up the storage.
Macbots drool as I XOOM through the Galaxy to my hearts Desire.

[Q] WHY can't you delete preinstalled apps?

Hi folks,
As you can tell from the title I'm a smartphone noob and didn't realise you couldn't do this (see the amount of people I've spoke to who didn't even notice you can't delete apps that come with the phone! What's with that?).
But as you can see I emphasised the 'why', 'cause I've searched everywhere but can't find a reason as to why. I'd assume it was just so you can't delete bloatware, but even the Nexus that runs on stock Android has the same issue.
Does anyone know why (or guess why) you can't delete preinstalled apps?
Thanks!
If your device is rooted, all you have to do is download Root Explorer from the market and delete the APK files from the system.
They're located in: /system/app/
You have to press "Mount R/W" on the top right of the application before you can read and write. Make sure hit "Mount R/O" in the same spot after you're done editing though. Also, make sure that what you're deleting isn't something you need and you should probably back-up the .APK files to be safe. If you mess up and don't back up, you can still just re-flash or re-download GAPPS without a problem. Have fun .
Thanks
I was thinking about rooting my phone actually, I'll check that out (I'm sooooo going to back up everything lol).
But! The question was WHY you can't delete the preinstalled apps. Does anyone know the reasoning behind it?
You're welcome mate .
Just for safety I suppose. And you should definitely root your phone, it'll open a whole new world for you!
manufacturer /operator agreements...
tmpchr said:
manufacturer /operator agreements...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That and basically without rooting your phone it's basically like a comps guest profile. A lot less can mess up if you can't play around with certain files/settings.
Makes sense.
Thanks folks
I am also unhappy that i cannot uninstall apps that came with the phone and i have yet to find a good reason as to why not. most of the apps i want to delete are free on the market, already compatible with my phone and can be deleted or uninstalled without causing any major issues.
tmpchr says "manufacturer /operator agreements..."
ok ill buy that, sounds like a good business opportunity, (i would do it) good advertising, shared/reduced costs...etc. but the end user should still have the option to remove.
I totally agree with you guys, at the very beginning I had so big apps installed on my device (motorola xt720), for instance MotoNav was about 1.5 GB and spoiled my battery life. Luckily I discovered how to root the device and now, using "root uninstaller" that you find in the market, all of them are just a memory
You could also use Titanium Backup to remove programs.

Clean up after multiple restores

I've backed up a few times with My Backup Pro and flashed ROMs, restoring data via the same program. It seems, looking at it now, that I have somehow managed to duplicate my contacts multiple times. I now have a huge number of contacts, many of them identical and I keep getting link suggestions for all of them.
Any ideas how I can clean this mess up? I've searched and found a few related threads in other forums, but none of them were quite this problem and none of them seemed to have any solutions.
It seems I'm also having a similar problem with apps. It looks like my apps that were moved to the SD card originally are still there, but not being seen by the system. My Backup Pro restored all my apps to the phone, and those are the ones it's using. If I move all those apps to the SD card, now I think I'll have two versions of those apps.
Is there any way to run something that can check my phone for these kinds of duplicates and consolidate things a little? I'm getting worried that I'll end up filling my phone up with useless repeats of things until it's just a pile of bloated crap...
I had a similar problem with my google contacts duplicating themselves for some reason. If duplicates are google you can go to google.com/contacts to edit them. There is a "Find Duplicates" button on the right.
I actually just found this as well. I tried it and resynced my google account on the phone and it doesn't seem to have removed them. Is there something I have to do to force the phone to get rid of the duplicates as well?
Not the right place for it, but figured since I have a thread going already I might as well ask here. I'm trying to Fix Permissions in ROM Manager, as I figure those might be pretty messed up after everything as well. But, even though ROM Manager has Root Access, it tells me an error occurred while "trying to run privileged commands." I have the paid version, I'm not sure why this is happening. Thoughts?
EDIT: Didn't want to keep bumping this thing, but I found the app Contact Remover to be a big lifesaver in a few ways. Specifically, I had 75 blank contacts that were just sitting there for some reason. This app allowed me to select multiples and delete them easily, in a way the People app wouldn't! https://market.android.com/details?id=com.octabode.dcfd
Silas0220 said:
It seems I'm also having a similar problem with apps. It looks like my apps that were moved to the SD card originally are still there, but not being seen by the system. My Backup Pro restored all my apps to the phone, and those are the ones it's using. If I move all those apps to the SD card, now I think I'll have two versions of those apps.
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is actually something I've been wondering about myself.
Most of my apps are on my SD, and I'm preparing to flash a new Rom, for the first time ever (aside from the rooting process, that is).
Seems I recall something similar occurring post-root, with apps I had on prior.
I'm thinking I should move them back on to the phone, do a new backup, then flash the new Rom, restore, and then move them back to the SD.
Inspire 4G ¦ XDA Premium

Help Resolving Bug: Android Is Optimizing Apps / Low Storage Space

I have found that across two different Roms, both on different phones i have came across this odd bug.
Current build is the Sprint Galaxy S 5 running the latest version of Rwilco.
Honestly though that's irrelevant.
The bug is this. Each time the phone is restarted i get the "Android is Optimizing" and it goes through a slew of apps. Afterwards i Miraculously have a slew of apps that needs updating. After about 5-6 restarts i then run into an issue of storage space.
When you do a scan of what the hell is taking up so much space you will come up empty handed.
However if you download a root file explorer like Es FileExplorer enable hidden files and System files and then navigate to:
ROOT/Data/Apps
You will see many versions of your apps that you have downloaded have duplicated with a _1 _2 _3 placeholder denoting each time the app has been optimized or updated. Lately ive been going through, deleting the oldest versions of the app, restarting and then running updates from the play store and it has resolved the problem only temporarily. I have no idea what is causing this or why.
Does anyone have a clue

GC and CC logs of Mozilla (Firefox ? ) consuming huge amount of space

I have previously posted this question in the Samsung S7 Edge section here http://forum.xda-developers.com/s7-edge/help/gc-cc-logs-mozilla-consuming-huge-space-t3397783 but didn't get any response. It is possible that the topic didn't get any attention as it is in the wrong section and I also feared that my problem could be due to malware and some other security bugs.
My problem started when I was suddenly told that my S7 is running out space without any new huge apps being installed. I tracked down the sudden lose of storage space to a folder named "memory-reports" inside the default Download folder. The folder content comprise multiple logfiles with each file sizes averaging 30mbs, and the number of files gradually increase and eventually hogging over 3gigs of storage space. I deleted the entire folder with the logfiles but the folder appeared again with similar logfiles.
after Googling around, I found the description of the logfiles here https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/...GC_and_CC_logs. it seem to relate to Mozilla Firefox and I doubt this problem is specific to Samsung S7 Edge although this is the phone I am using now and the problem only occurred to me for the first time recently. couldn't find any mention of similar issue anywhere else via Google, but maybe some of you guys are better at digging them up. Seeking some comments, suggestions as to what cause, possible solutions...
NOTE: My phone is NOT rooted. the logfiles are still being generated periodically and have to be deleted to recover the space. deleting them don;t seem to affect the operation of any apps and especially FIREFOX, which is the only connection I can find with mention of those logfiles name with MOZILLA. The problem seem unique to me at the moment as I still couldn't find any reference on Google to them. Any head-up suggestion on possible reason and ways to track down exactly which apps, background process are generating the log files are certainly welcomed.
I am experiencing the same issue on my Motorola Nexus 6.
Thanks for this. I was facing the same problem. I just deleted the files. It didn't seem to hurt firefox. ]

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