Memory Shortage - Ankidroid won't run

[George Taus]

Newbie to Anki. Like the ability to sync my laptop with my tablet, just what I was looking for.

Unfortunately, Ankidroid stopped running complaining that the internal SD card memory storage was too low. After some looking around, I discovered two large .thumbdata3 files in the DCIM folder had grown to over 5+GB. These files are used by the Android Gallery program for media files, but for some reason, the .thumbdata3 files don't contain anything I can decipher.

I have read this is a problem with the Android OS. I have v4.0.4. I never noticed this memory shortage problem before I installed Ankidroid on my tablet. I don't know if the problem was there all the time but I only first noticed it because Ankidroid checks the memory status, or if the sync properties of the Ankidroid has somehow maxed out these .thumbdata3 files on my tablet by constantly downloading something off the internet.

At any rate, Ankidroid will not work because of this memory shortage problem. I have tried deleting the .thumbdata3 files, inserting fake .thumbdata3 files of small text, but the files just come back to build up to 5+GB. There is an app that deletes the .thumbdata files, but that too is only temporary and the tablet starts rebuilding those huge files.

Again, I don't know if Ankidroid has anything to do with this bug, but since I cannot get the program to work on my tablet when the memory is maxed out, I am hoping that someone here can guide me to a permanent solution.

Any suggestions appreciated. Thanks.

[Nicolas Raoul]

Hello George,

Please try this:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?s=ffe4087aee9abb75be606f80a5e5bdd2&p=33251857&postcount=6

Cheers!

Nicolas Raoul

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[George Taus]

Clearing the cache is a temporary fix. The tablet will rebuild the .thumbdata3 files and within an hour the files are maxed out again at 5+GB - which is the total available memory on my internal SD card. Hence, my frustration. But yes, when I clear the .thumbnail data files, I can run Ankidroid for a little while. I am just hoping the someone knows of a permanent solution to this solution. Thank you.

[Nicolas Raoul]

Hi George,

Could you please ask at http://android.stackexchange.com ?

There are many Android experts there, so I am sure someone will have an idea.

Cheers!

Nicolas Raoul

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/anki-android/6a310149-e1d2-4ca9-a8fd-82362a612672%40googlegroups.com.

[George Taus]

Thanks for the link. I posted my question there. Like I said, I think it might be an Android OS bug more than a problem with Ankidroid. Ankidroid always checks the memory space before it syncs with the web, that's how I found my tablet's internal space was being maxed out.

[Tomasz Melcer]

W dniu 21.02.2014 08:06, George Taus pisze:

> Thanks for the link. I posted my question there. Like I said, I think it
> might be an Android OS bug more than a problem with Ankidroid. Ankidroid
> always checks the memory space before it syncs with the web, that's how
> I found my tablet's internal space was being maxed out.

Do you, by any chance, use lots of images in your decks? Or in any other
application?


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Tomasz Melcer

[George Taus]

Yes, I am building a language deck and almost every card has an audio field and a graphics field. Having said that, I have only made 250 cards and the media files are not very large. My Anki \collection.media folder is only 7 mb at this point. So there is no rational way that my DCIM thumbnail folder should be 5+GB with the problem files in question.

I do have an external 32GB micro SD card in my tablet and that is full of audiobooks, books, music and video files. Those files have been there long before I started using Anki/Ankidroid. But, like I said, it was not until I loaded Ankidroid that I noticed my internal SD card was full - because Ankidroid checks memory space before syncing. None of my other apps check memory before running.

FWIW, my Ankidroid media folder is also only 7 mb. So I know that is not full of junk.

Reading internet posts elsewhere, this problem seems to be with the Android OS. I have also sent a message to NextBook tech support, the makers of my tablet, but, as you can imagine, no reply...... I was hoping that others have reported a similar problem and maybe we could get a firmware update to solve the problem. No luck, yet.

I do have an app called Thumbnail File Deleter which deletes all my thumbnails, and allows me to run Ankidroid and have it sync with the web. But the problem files will rebuild themselves and max out my memory. So I have to run the deleter app before any attempt to sync my Ankidroid tablet with the web. I would prefer a permanent solution, but if I have to live with temporary fixes, so be it. I just hate knowing that there is a virus/bug/malware that is causing my equipment to malfunction and I cannot fix it.

[Tomasz Melcer]

On 21.02.2014 18:14, George Taus wrote:
> Yes, I am building a language deck and almost every card has an audio
> field and a graphics field. Having said that, I have only made 250 cards
> and the media files are not very large. My Anki \collection.media folder
> is only 7 mb at this point. So there is no rational way that my DCIM
> thumbnail folder should be 5+GB with the problem files in question.
>
> I do have an external 32GB micro SD card in my tablet and that is full
> of audiobooks, books, music and video files. Those files have been there
> long before I started using Anki/Ankidroid. But, like I said, it was not
> until I loaded Ankidroid that I noticed my internal SD card was full -
> because Ankidroid checks memory space before syncing. None of my other
> apps check memory before running.

It's just a work-around, but if you don't need the OS to scan all your
media files, you could try disabling media scanning for some (all?)
directories by placing an empty file named ".nomedia" [1]. There's a
chance that doing so will reduce the thumbnail file size.

This is just a guess, but maybe there's just a certain directory, or
maybe even just a single file on your SD card that triggers the bug that
makes the thumbnail file that big.

[1]
http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/how-to-prevent-a-directory-from-being-scanned-by-android-gallery/


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Tomasz Melcer

[George Taus]

Thanks, I'll give the .nomedia suggestion a try. At present, I am working on another idea, but your idea sounds promising. It might help me narrow down where the problem folder(s) and file(s) are.

[George Taus]

Just to close the loop, I ended up putting an empty .nomedia folder into every media folder I had in both my internal and external SD card. I have not had the .thumbdata3 problem maxing out my memory since then. About 3 days now. I know putting the empty .nomedia folder in every media folder was a shotgun approach, and I might never know which files(s) were causing the .thumbdata3 problem, but at least my tablet has been running just fine for the past 3 days. Ankidroid syncs up and runs perfectly.

Thanks to all who responded. Appreciated the suggestions.