Develop Bugs

Critically low on storage popup

I keep getting a popup that says the Fire TV is critically low on storage. Here's a df from adb shell:
[email protected]:/storage/emulated/legacy # df
df
Filesystem Size Used Free Blksize
/dev 973M 48K 973M 4096
/mnt/secure 973M 0K 973M 4096
/mnt/asec 973M 0K 973M 4096
/mnt/obb 973M 0K 973M 4096
/storage/usb 973M 0K 973M 4096
/system 756M 721M 35M 4096
/data 5G 2G 3G 4096
/cache 756M 13M 742M 4096
/firmware 63M 7M 56M 16384
/persist 7M 4M 3M 4096
/mnt/shell/emulated 5G 2G 3G 4096
/storage/emulated/legacy 5G 2G 3G 4096
/data/data/com.amazon.avod/files/streaming 400M 0K 400M 4096
[email protected]:/storage/emulated/legacy #
I don't see a problem. I'm running SPMC. That's probably the biggest space hog, but where is the problem?
One thing I'd like to try is clear out all of the plugins. IS there an easy way to do that without disturning the other settings?

Are you using the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml? Looking at your usage, I'm guessing that's the culprit.
Without the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml, XBMC uses the device's RAM for caching videos. But if you use the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml file, it forces all XBMC caching to be done on the hard drive, and ignores RAM. And it will cache the entire video you're watching with no limit on how much hard drive space it uses. So if you start watching an HD movie, and you have a decent internet connection, it's pretty easy to use up all your available hard drive space because it's caching the entire movie to your hard drive as you're watching it. With a decent connection, you'll cache the entire film faster than you're watching it, so you'll run out of hard drive space anytime you watch a video that's of a large file size. That space will be freed up when you quit the video. But if you're watching large HD movies frequently, you can run into this situation all the time, since the AFTV only has ~5GB of usable space in most cases.
This can often be confusing if you don't know how the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml works, because you'll constantly get low space warnings while watching videos, but then when you exit out to check hard drive space, you'll see 2-3GB of free space and wonder why you received the message. The Zero cache advancedsettings.xml file has gotten a nasty undeserved reputation of being a magic fix all for buffering and such. In situations like this it can actually making things worse. I'd only recommend the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml if you have a device with ample hard drive space. And even then, its purpose is to allow you to cache more of the video file, not to cache it faster.
As far as clearing out plugins, I really doubt that is the issue at all. Plugins themselves don't take up any noticeable space. But inside XBMC you can navigate to System\Add-ons\Enabled Addons and see all the plugins that are installed.
Hope that helps.

Thank you! Here's the advancedsettings.xml that I've tried:
Code:
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>0</cachemembuffersize>
<readbufferfactor>10</readbufferfactor>
</network>
</advancedsettings>
I put it in the /sdcard/Android/data/com.semperpax.spmc/files/.xbmc/userdata directory. I force closed spmc, cleared the program's cache, but not the data, and restarted it. I still got the popup. I then pulled the plug and rebooted the Fire TV and so far, so good.
I used the Amazon Fire TV Utility App to set up my Fire TV back when it was at 0.33 and I don't think it supported SPMC. I just upgraded and it looks like it has settings for SPMC. It has some advancedsettings.xml files in there. The first one is the same as the one I posted above.

KCFish said:
Are you using the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml? Looking at your usage, I'm guessing that's the culprit.
Without the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml, XBMC uses the device's RAM for caching videos. But if you use the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml file, it forces all XBMC caching to be done on the hard drive, and ignores RAM. And it will cache the entire video you're watching with no limit on how much hard drive space it uses. So if you start watching an HD movie, and you have a decent internet connection, it's pretty easy to use up all your available hard drive space because it's caching the entire movie to your hard drive as you're watching it. With a decent connection, you'll cache the entire film faster than you're watching it, so you'll run out of hard drive space anytime you watch a video that's of a large file size. That space will be freed up when you quit the video. But if you're watching large HD movies frequently, you can run into this situation all the time, since the AFTV only has ~5GB of usable space in most cases.
This can often be confusing if you don't know how the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml works, because you'll constantly get low space warnings while watching videos, but then when you exit out to check hard drive space, you'll see 2-3GB of free space and wonder why you received the message. The Zero cache advancedsettings.xml file has gotten a nasty undeserved reputation of being a magic fix all for buffering and such. In situations like this it can actually making things worse. I'd only recommend the Zero cache advancedsettings.xml if you have a device with ample hard drive space. And even then, its purpose is to allow you to cache more of the video file, not to cache it faster.
As far as clearing out plugins, I really doubt that is the issue at all. Plugins themselves don't take up any noticeable space. But inside XBMC you can navigate to System\Add-ons\Enabled Addons and see all the plugins that are installed.
Hope that helps.
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This is excellent info on why a Zero Cache setting should never be used on a device like the Fire TV with limited hard drive space. Why use the internal hard drive when you can utilize the RAM (2 GB) to buffer a video? Just think of RAM as a free ride and use case to buffer a video.

mjbxx said:
This is excellent info on why a Zero Cache setting should never be used on a device like the Fire TV with limited hard drive space. Why use the internal hard drive when you can utilize the RAM (2 GB) to buffer a video? Just think of RAM as a free ride and use case to buffer a video.
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So what settings would you suggest? I ask because the default yields problems on the Fire TV apparently.

Sizzlechest said:
So what settings would you suggest? I ask because the default yields problems on the Fire TV apparently.
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Click to collapse
From the Kodi Wiki. I modified the "cachemembuffersize" to 471859200 (157286400 X 3) which increases cache size to 450MB and uses 1200MB of total RAM. This setting works great because the Fire TV has 2GB RAM to work with.
3.4 Example 4
A safe setting for most devices with 1GB of RAM that should help most users "on the edge". All protocols get cached, cache rate fills up pretty much as fast as possible, and cache size is 150MB, using 400MB of ram total.
advancedsettings.xml
=================
<advancedsettings>
<network>
<buffermode>1</buffermode>
<cachemembuffersize>157286400</cachemembuffersize> (My Setting: 471859200)
<readbufferfactor>20</readbufferfactor>
</network>
</advancedsettings>

My fire stick is stuck on the critically low on storage screen. When I try to click on the remove apps button, there is no response. I am unable to access any settings. If i unplug the firestick it always comes back to this screen. Any help would be appreciated.

I’m not sure how advanced all of you are but I’ve been annoyed by this low storage message and always to “ delete up to 500 Megs of apps but all the apps uninstalled seems to change little I think the device is broken/corrupt
The contact get a call doesn’t work. Might be the covid19 effecting other things like customer service but chat help is useless.

On my Firestick 2nd. gen the culprit was the /data/data/com.amazon.tv.launcher/databases/mbcache.db which had grown to nearly 1 GB.
My device is not rooted so deleting it is not an option. Somehow it did reset itself after the latest update of the amazon.tv launcher and my space came back.

[Q] FireTV Stick only 494mb ram?

Hello, I just received my fire stick and installed Kodi. In Kodi system info it says it only has 494mb ram so I installed CPU Z and it confirms it only has 494mb total. I know system apps and the os use ram but this thing is advertised as having 1GB of ram and i don't believe it is using a whole gig of ram. Am I missing something or is this thing falsely advertised as having more ram than it really does?

if i remember correctly half of the ram is saved for the gpu so yes it does have a gig of ram

Borincano82 said:
Am I missing something or is this thing falsely advertised as having more ram than it really does?
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I was wondering about the same thing. I have both the Fire Tv and the Fire TV Stick. On my Fire TV, Kodi say I have 2GB of RAM so I expected Kodi to say I have 1GB of RAM on my Fire TV Stick but Kodi only reported 494MB of RAM in my Fire TV stick so I am a bit puzzled.

The Fire TV aand Fire TV sticks are not really comparable, cause they do not have the same hardware. The only way to compare them are to compare the differences. The Fire TV stick has 1gb of ram so 494MB of available ram is great.

lowbee said:
I was wondering about the same thing. I have both the Fire Tv and the Fire TV Stick. On my Fire TV, Kodi say I have 2GB of RAM so I expected Kodi to say I have 1GB of RAM on my Fire TV Stick but Kodi only reported 494MB of RAM in my Fire TV stick so I am a bit puzzled.
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Interesting. That may be due to the Fire TV having a dedicated GPU, while the Fire TV Stick does not.

Your available memory means the amount of memory that you have left. In system info on Kodi go to the hardware tab, what does it say for total memory and available memory? I am guessing it will say right around 1000mb for total memory and around 500mb for available memory.

porkenhimer said:
In system info on Kodi go to the hardware tab, what does it say for total memory and available memory? I am guessing it will say right around 1000mb for total memory and around 500mb for available memory.
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And that your guess would be WRONG. See picture attached.

I too have the FireTV and FireTV Stick and Kodi & CPU Z reports almost 2 gigs on the TV. I have not known the info from those apps to be inaccurate on any other of the devices I have tried them on before. The stick default ui and Kodi's default skin is a little sluggish compared to the TV but not terribly so, that being said streaming is smooth and thats what matters.
So if the stick really does have 1GB ram but only half is really available then should it not be advertised as having 500mb?

Borincano82 said:
I too have the FireTV and FireTV Stick and Kodi & CPU Z reports almost 2 gigs on the TV. I have not known the info from those apps to be inaccurate on any other of the devices I have tried them on before. The stick default ui and Kodi's default skin is a little sluggish compared to the TV but not terribly so, that being said streaming is smooth and thats what matters.
So if the stick really does have 1GB ram but only half is really available then should it not be advertised as having 500mb?
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Click to collapse
No because you are already using the other half. As soon as you start your device it will start using memory. It has 1gb, but running the devices uses the memory so if you were to check your memory it would tell you how much total memory it has and how much is still available to use.

I suppose you are correct, oh well as long as it works I'm happy. Thanks to all for helping clear this up for me.

I just found your answer on amazon.com. The Fire TV stick has 1GB of ram, 512MB of system memory and 512MB of video memory. XBMC/Kodi shows system memory only.

porkenhimer said:
XBMC/Kodi shows system memory only.
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Ok, then how do you explain the attached screenshoot from a FireTV non-stick running Kodi ?
Following your logic above, do I have more than 2GB of RAM in my FireTV non-stick ?
.

lowbee said:
Ok, then how do you explain the attached screenshoot from a FireTV non-stick running Kodi ?
Following your logic above, do I have more than 2GB of RAM in my FireTV non-stick ?
.
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Click to collapse
Its not logic, its fact. The fire TV stick has 1GB of ram and the Fire TV has 2GB of ram. The two devices are not the same except for the UI. They do not have the same hardware. Some devices use ram as shared memory, which means the system memory is shared for different opperations, the fire TV stick does not share its ram for video, instead it has seperate memory for video/graphics, called a VPU. I will help you understand. Lets say you went out and bought a PC that has 4GB of ram, well the video card may set aside 1GB of that ram to use for Video/Graphics. Then lets say you upgraded the graphics, its may have its own ram so it does not need to set aside ram anymore. Then your PC would have 4GB ram and lets say the upgraded graphics card had 1GB of ram, XBMC would still only show the 4GB of system memory. So its simple, the fire TV shares its memory for everything, but the fire TV stick does not, it instead has video memory to handle video/graphics. This thread here should make people understand that just because two devices have the same name and are made by the same company, does not make them the same. The Fire TV and Fire TV stick are two totally different devices that should never be compared unless you compare the difference, cause there is way more different about the two devices than there are the same.

porkenhimer said:
Its not logic, its fact. The fire TV stick has 1GB of ram and the Fire TV has 2GB of ram. The two devices are not the same except for the UI. They do not have the same hardware. Some devices use ram as shared memory, which means the system memory is shared for different opperations, the fire TV stick does not share its ram for video, instead it has seperate memory for video/graphics, called a VPU. I will help you understand. Lets say you went out and bought a PC that has 4GB of ram, well the video card may set aside 1GB of that ram to use for Video/Graphics. Then lets say you upgraded the graphics, its may have its own ram so it does not need to set aside ram anymore. Then your PC would have 4GB ram and lets say the upgraded graphics card had 1GB of ram, XBMC would still only show the 4GB of system memory. So its simple, the fire TV shares its memory for everything, but the fire TV stick does not, it instead has video memory to handle video/graphics. This thread here should make people understand that just because two devices have the same name and are made by the same company, does not make them the same. The Fire TV and Fire TV stick are two totally different devices that should never be compared unless you compare the difference, cause there is way more different about the two devices than there are the same.
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You have that backwards its the Fire TV BOX that has the dedicated video ram while the Fire TV STICK shares its memory with the OS and Video chip.

AFTV2 Memory issue

Can anyone who has a Fire TV 2 and Fire TV 1 check their available memory in both using Kodi System Info. My AFTV2 shows:
1520 total memory and 350 megs free, while my AFTV1 shows 1946 total and 939 megs free....Is this correct? Seems to be a drastic difference between the 2? If someone knows why there is such a difference I would appreciate hearing from you. Btw my AFTV2 is rooted on 5.0.4 and my AFTV1 is rooted with rbox pre-rooted rom.
thanks

It's simply because the 2ng-gen omits the memory allocated to the GPU, while the 1st-gen doesn't. It's normal. They both have 2GB of memory total, which is shared by both the CPU and GPU.

AFTVnews.com said:
It's simply because the 2ng-gen omits the memory allocated to the GPU, while the 1st-gen doesn't. It's normal. They both have 2GB of memory total, which is shared by both the CPU and GPU.
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Got it. Appreciate clearing that up for me.

How to move games to external USB on Sony Android TV

Just got myself a Sony kd75xg8796bu which has Android TV and decided would install some games on it .. which worked for Asphalt 8 .. but then realised that there is not that much space available (8gb'ish ) ... so I have added a 64Gb USB drive, which it sees and allowed me to format .. so far so good
So, my next thing I wanted to do was move the Asphalt 8 Game across to this drive, however ... even though it shows that the game is 1.2Gb in size, it only shows 143Mb on teh USB drive, and now am left with hardly any free space on the internal
Looking around the web, it seems that you should be able to move, but I don't seem to be able to .. any ideas?

I also have added in sony android tv a 64gb usb stick as internal. It formated and I see it in settings as 64gb. But i move an app there 10mb, and it show me 2giga free in the usb..? How can it be? Any idea? I should have almost 64 giga free not 2..

Newbee Here! Forgive my lack of knowledge for now please!

Yes I am a newbee here and I admit this forum looks a bit over my head at the first look. I have a 50" Insignia Amazon Fire TV that I bought a while back from Best Buy. Admittedly I do not watch a lot of things every day or night, but mostly I will sit and watch a TV shows (seasonal series) type of programs. Not into News (fake news) or music all that much.
I am now just educating myself about things like KODI where I can get live TV and ALL the other goodies via using the down loader app and the steps described as from some of the YT video channels gurus!
After initially doing this I began to get the "LOW STORAGE" (aka low memory) 8GB of Internal Storage. I added a USB 8GB thumb-drive on the left side panel and was able to "move" a few of the downloaded apps to the external memory (USB). However unless I get the internal memory "FREED-UP" so there is 500MB of open space on the internal memory the LOW STORAGE WARNINGS (aka "pop-ups") come back! Arrg!
I am wondering what else I can do to not fill up the 8GB of internal memory bank? Some of the Amazon (extra features) packaged goodies like Photos and Music etc. Are things I wish I could delete but there is no "delete" option in the Application Management function. I would like to remove some of the "pre-loaded extras I probably won't ever use .
I know there must be others here who understand the issues -- I have read a couple of the threads -- but they get a bit too technical for me - at least at this point in my learning curve. If someone can give me some third grade level help that would be appreciated here. Thanks!

Rich in KY said:
Yes I am a newbee here and I admit this forum looks a bit over my head at the first look. I have a 50" Insignia Amazon Fire TV that I bought a while back from Best Buy. Admittedly I do not watch a lot of things every day or night, but mostly I will sit and watch a TV shows (seasonal series) type of programs. Not into News (fake news) or music all that much.
I am now just educating myself about things like KODI where I can get live TV and ALL the other goodies via using the down loader app and the steps described as from some of the YT video channels gurus!
After initially doing this I began to get the "LOW STORAGE" (aka low memory) 8GB of Internal Storage. I added a USB 8GB thumb-drive on the left side panel and was able to "move" a few of the downloaded apps to the external memory (USB). However unless I get the internal memory "FREED-UP" so there is 500MB of open space on the internal memory the LOW STORAGE WARNINGS (aka "pop-ups") come back! Arrg!
I am wondering what else I can do to not fill up the 8GB of internal memory bank? Some of the Amazon (extra features) packaged goodies like Photos and Music etc. Are things I wish I could delete but there is no "delete" option in the Application Management function. I would like to remove some of the "pre-loaded extras I probably won't ever use .
I know there must be others here who understand the issues -- I have read a couple of the threads -- but they get a bit too technical for me - at least at this point in my learning curve. If someone can give me some third grade level help that would be appreciated here. Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The simple answer to your question would be to not use kodi on such a low memory device.
Kodi uses a lot of cached space so is not ideal for devices with low storage.
If you are able to use external storage then you can use this to hold most of kodis files.
If not, then.. are you not able to use a couple of movie apks such as cinema HD or Film+ instead as these apks are small in size, use minimal space and do the job well (just install vlc and mx player alongside).
Regards

Duplicate post*****

Bertonumber1 said:
The simple answer to your question would be to not use kodi on such a low memory device.
Kodi uses a lot of cached space so is not ideal for devices with low storage.
If you are able to use external storage then you can use this to hold most of kodis files.
If not, then.. are you not able to use a couple of movie apks such as cinema HD or Film+ instead as these apks are small in size, use minimal space and do the job well (just install vlc and mx player alongside).
Regards
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you! Yes I will research where I can get the lowest CACHE eating apps. And remove KODI as you are indicating it is not great for a low memory device such as my Insignia Fire TV with it's mere 8GB of internal storage.