F-Droid eats space (CleanCacheService issue)?

asked 2016-08-16 14:59:54 +0200

Self-Perfection gravatar image

updated 2016-08-22 23:02:28 +0200

I've noticed recently that F-Droid started to accumulate installed apk files in /data/data/org.fdroid.fdroid/files named as install-{1,2}[0-9]{9,10}.apk. Over two months I got 60MB of installed apks. I assumed at as a bug in F-Droid and reported it.

Discussion showed that now F-Droid makes temporary copies of installed apks and then removes it with CleanCacheService which runs "when the app starts, and on a timer" but does not start on boot (according to devs). Apparently this services never performed its job my device for a couple of months though android support is running on my device 90% of the time.

Android jumble over standard linux stack is a complete mystery to me, so I'm not sure now if there is a bug and in which system exactly. Is it a bug in aliendalvik that prevents essential component of android app from running? Or is it a bug in F-Droid that relies on something that is not guaranteed?

Can anyone equally savvy in SailfishOS and Android stuff contribute?

UPD: Ewww, actually it appears that each app installed via F-Droid, now leaves two extra copies of apk:

  • /data/media/Android/data/org.fdroid.fdroid/cache/apks/f-droid.org--1/*apk
  • /data/data/org.fdroid.fdroid/files/install-*apk

I tried setting "Allow application background services to start on boot" tick for F-Droid for several days and did not do the trick, these extra copies were not removed. I'm going to add purging of thiese stuff to my script that makes Btrfs snapshots of device on schedule.

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Comments

Did you allow fdroid to run background service upon start in the sailfish settings (maybe that needed for the timer approach that you mentioned)?

bomo ( 2016-08-16 15:35:02 +0200 )edit

@bomo I did not.

I don't like extra stuff in RAM, RAM is always scarce on Jolla. F-Droid devs stated, that CleanCacheService does not start on boot, but only "when the app starts, and on a timer".

Generally for me as a user seems reasonable that app should clean stuff behind without extra services.

Self-Perfection ( 2016-08-16 17:18:42 +0200 )edit

For it was not clear that "when the app starts, and on a timer" means only "when app starts and then every X hours using a timer". For me, this could also mean after boot "every X hours using a timer"

bomo ( 2016-08-16 18:10:57 +0200 )edit