ubuquity using over 2 GB during apt upgrade due to unused packages

Bug #112516 reported by Neal McBurnett
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
casper (Baltix)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned
casper (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
ubiquity (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

I just ran out of space doing an Xubuntu Feisty install. It said I
needed 2 GB, and I do. df says 2016016 1K blocks (= 2.06 GB).

Symptom: it just stopped installing. I had to look in
/var/log/messages to see the bad news:

May 4 23:08:48 ubuntu ubiquity: Unpacking openoffice.org-core (from .../openoffice.org-core_2.2.0-1ubuntu3_i386.deb) ...
May 4 23:09:05 ubuntu ubiquity: dpkg: error processing /target/var/cache/apt/archives/openoffice.org-core_2.2.0-1ubuntu3_i386.deb (--unpack):
May 4 23:09:05 ubuntu ubiquity: failed in buffer_write(fd) (9, ret=-1): backend dpkg-deb during `./usr/lib/openoffice/program/libsvt680li.so': No space left on device

At that point I had 2015992 blocks used and it was 100% full (since
some are reserved for root). (I also had swap and other partitions
for /home and a previous Redhat install).

I remembered seeing that the installer was loading package updates
over the network, so while still logged in on the original livecd
boot, I mounted the partition that I was installing onto and looked
around. There were 100 MB of upgrades in var/cache/apt:

/media/_mnt_hda8/var/cache/apt$ du
4 ./archives/partial
82380 ./archives
101684 .

Workaround: install without a network connection!

Without ever rebooting, I started another install. I popped my
wireless card out early on in the install process, and everything
worked. During the install I carefully monitored things, and noted
that this time, after most of the install, but before it started
deleting unneeded packages, it got down to 80 MB free, and 1833416
used:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda8 2016016 1833416 80188 96% /target

So it was significantly past full the first time around, with all the
cached packages to upgrade.

After deleting packages, there was lots of free space:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda8 2016016 1310348 603256 69% /target

So I wonder if unused packages should be deleted before packages are
updated from the network?

The reinstall is working fine.

Machine: 1999 Dell latitude CPi A 366st with 256 MB RAM.

Revision history for this message
Nanley Chery (nanoman) wrote :

Thanks for your report. I'm afraid that one of your partitions seems to be too small to complete an Ubuntu desktop installation successfully. Bug 48355 notes that the partitioner should have warned you about this. This is fixed in 6.06.1.

Revision history for this message
Evan (ev) wrote :

I do not believe this to be the same as 48355.

Revision history for this message
Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote :

Rejecting the casper task, which isn't relevant here; the ubiquity task remains open.

Changed in casper:
status: New → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Andreas Moog (ampelbein) wrote : Old standing report

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Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been
any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue
for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

 status incomplete
 assignee <email address hidden>
 subscribe

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Revision history for this message
Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, I am closing it because the bug has been fixed in the latest development version of Ubuntu - the Intrepid Ibex.

Changed in casper:
status: New → Fix Released
Changed in ubiquity:
status: New → Fix Released
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