[Bug 1246651] Re: lubuntu 13.10 failed - no space left on device

[Peter Cordes]

Try df -i.  You might have run out of inodes if you're using ext4, where
you have to allocate space for inodes at FS creation time.  This
happened to me when upgrading 12.04 to 14.04.  I got a no space left on
device error while a postinst script was running for something.  I'm
still worried I might not have reinstalled all affected packages :/

peter at tesla:~$ df -ih
Filesystem     Inodes IUsed IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1        428K  321K  108K   75% /
...
/dev/sdb3         50M  359K   50M    1% /var/tmp

 I use xfs for most of my filesystems, but ext4 for my / and /home.
Removing a couple -docs packages that had tens of thousands of files
each, and some old kernel modules / headers packages, freed up 100k
inodes.  (It used to be slightly inconvenient to get grub to boot from
xfs, compared to other filesystems.  I could probably just use xfs for
everything now, esp. with XFS's  performance improvements in the past
few years to metadata-heavy workloads, like creating / deleting lots of
small files.)

 ubuntu-docs is really a big offender for inode consumption, with massive amounts of files and symlinks like
/usr/share/help/C/ubuntu-help/clock.page
Every symlink is a separate inode, unlike hardlinks.  (not that I'm suggesting packages should install hardlinks, just that using the FS as a database has its downsides, esp. in packages installed by default.)

 Luckily for me, English is my native language, and I don't think I ever
looked at any of the locally-installed Ubuntu docs, so I can just remove
as many internationalization packages as possible to minimize space
usage and the amount of stuff that gets downloaded / updated.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1246651

Title:
  lubuntu 13.10 failed - no space left on device

Status in “ubuntu-release-upgrader” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  ...Setting up libclutter-gtk-1.0-0:amd64 (1.4.4-3) ...
  Setting up libcheese-gtk23:amd64 (3.8.3-0ubuntu1) ...
  Setting up libgnome-bluetooth11 (3.8.1-2ubuntu2) ...
  Setting up libgnome-control-center1 (1:3.6.3-0ubuntu45) ...
  Setting up gsettings-desktop-schemas (3.8.0-1ubuntu1) ...
  Setting up gnome-desktop3-data (3.8.4-0ubuntu1) ...
  dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
   failed to write status database record about 'libasn1-8-heimdal:i386' to '/var/lib/dpkg/status': No space left on device
  /usr/sbin/localepurge: line 114: echo: write error: No space left on device
  Error in function: 

  
  A fatal error occurred 

  Please report this as a bug and include the files 
  /var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log and /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log in 
  your report. The upgrade has aborted. 
  Your original sources.list was saved in 
  /etc/apt/sources.list.distUpgrade. 

  SystemError: E:Problem executing scripts DPkg::Post-Invoke 'if [ -x 
  /usr/sbin/localepurge ] && [ $(ps w -p $PPID | egrep -c 
  '(remove|purge)') != 1 ]; then /usr/sbin/localepurge; else exit 0; 
  fi', E:Sub-process returned an error code, E:Sub-process 
  /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2) 

  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/share/apport/apport-gtk", line 589, in <module>
      app = GTKUserInterface()
    File "/usr/share/apport/apport-gtk", line 48, in __init__
      apport.ui.UserInterface.__init__(self)
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 186, in __init__
      self.crashdb = apport.crashdb.get_crashdb(None)
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/crashdb.py", line 822, in get_crashdb
      with open(conf) as f:
  FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/apport/crashdb.conf'
  Error in sys.excepthook:
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 140, in apport_excepthook
      pr.write(f)
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/problem_report.py", line 321, in write
      file.write(v.replace(b'\n', b'\n '))
  OSError: [Errno 28] No space left on device

  During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport_python_hook.py", line 140, in apport_excepthook
      pr.write(f)
  OSError: [Errno 28] No space left on device

  Original exception was:
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/share/apport/apport-gtk", line 589, in <module>
      app = GTKUserInterface()
    File "/usr/share/apport/apport-gtk", line 48, in __init__
      apport.ui.UserInterface.__init__(self)
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/ui.py", line 186, in __init__
      self.crashdb = apport.crashdb.get_crashdb(None)
    File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apport/crashdb.py", line 822, in get_crashdb
      with open(conf) as f:
  FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/apport/crashdb.conf'

  Could not install the upgrades

  The upgrade has aborted. Your system could be in an unusable state. A 
  recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a). 

  Please report this bug in a browser at 
  http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+filebug 
  and attach the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ to the bug report. 
  installArchives() failed 

  dpkg: error: failed to write status database record about 'libasn1-8-heimdal:i386' to '/var/lib/dpkg/status': No space left on device
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "./xorg_fix_proprietary.py", line 156, in <module>
      shutil.copy(XORG_CONF, backup)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 119, in copy
      copyfile(src, dst)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 84, in copyfile
      copyfileobj(fsrc, fdst)
  IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device

  Upgrade complete

  The upgrade has completed but there were errors during the upgrade 
  process. 

  To continue please press [ENTER]

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