How do I delete backups? And how to prevent creation of new backups?

[oliver]

How can I delete Seedvault backups to free up storage space? My phone is running out of space, and I think that's causing a boot loop. Can I just delete stuff in .SeedVaultAndroidBackup?

Background: I did an upgrade from LineageOS 20 to 22 yesterday. Everything went fine. But this evening while the phone was charging, it started to repeatedly shut down and reboot. When it is running, I can see that the storage is completely full (only a few KB free); and Seedvault is doing a backup. I have no idea what is causing the reboots, but I suspect all kinds of system processes have problems now (there are often warnings about processes being killed now).

The phone has 64 GB of internal flash, and no other storage unfortunately. After the LOS upgrade I had ca. 1.5 GB left.
The .SeedVaultAndroidBackup directory currently uses 9.4 GB.

I have freed up some hundred MB by deleting other files, but the free space was quickly used up again, by something.

My suspicion is that Seedvault started doing its backup this evening when I charged the phone; and maybe it tried to create a new backup, or the backup now grew very large (too large for the remaining space)?

I have tried to disable Seedvault in the Android settings, but after reboot the backup still runs.

So, how can I delete Seedvault backups to free up some space? And how can I prevent Seedvault from running again after the forced reboot?

I have a different backup mechanism (Resticopia to a NAS), so it's OK for me if the Seedvault backups are gone.

[oliver]

Seriously, how is this not part of the FAQ? In fact, on the Github page I don't find the information that I would expect for a backup app, like:

• how can I see what is stored in the existing backup snapshots?
• how can I restore an old backup?
• how much space do the backups need?
• how can I remove backups in case I run out of space?

Maybe this project is aiming for a philosophy of "it just works, don't worry about it"; but personally I mainly feel powerless and left in the dark by this app. I appreciate that you build this backup app in your spare time (backups are important, and IMO the backup situation for Android is really bad!); but so far my contact with Seedvault has either been "huh, no idea what this does" or "holy shit, what is this thing doing to my phone??" :-(

I have now stopped Seedvault as described at https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/v08loz/comment/id7rh6a/ (Settings -> Apps -> Show all -> Show system apps -> search for seed -> force quit). And I have deleted about 7 GB from .SeedVaultAndroidBackup directory. After reboot Seedvault started again :-( so I force-stopped it again. Let's hope the phone works well enough to wake me in the morning.

[grote]

Seedvault automatically deletes old backups to free up space. Manually deletion isn't implemented, but there is a ticket. Backing up your phone to your phone isn't the best idea. There is even a warning dialog when you try that. The suggestion is to keep backup off your phone like on a flash drive or a cloud server.

[grote]

As for disabling Seedvault, just toggle off the switches in its main screen, like "Backup my apps".