Arch Linux

eigenstryker

Member

From: Seattle, Washington

Registered: 2018-02-16

Posts: 17

[SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

I'm stuck trying to figure out why pacman indicates there is no available disk space for installing packages, even though there is definitely available space.

For example, if I try to install the package, gdmap, I get the following output:

$ sudo pacman -S gdmap
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) gdmap-0.8.1-4

Total Download Size:   0.04 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0.27 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
error: Partition / too full: 5132 blocks needed, 0 blocks free
error: failed to commit transaction (not enough free disk space)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

And I could show a similar result for what happens when I try to do a system upgrade.

My web searches for this problem suggested looking at the output of df:

$ df -i
Filesystem       Inodes  IUsed    IFree IUse% Mounted on
dev             2036398    438  2035960    1% /dev
run             2038042    654  2037388    1% /run
/dev/sda2       2413152 309069  2104083   13% /
tmpfs           2038042    176  2037866    1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           2038042     18  2038024    1% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           2038042     30  2038012    1% /tmp
/dev/sda3      11296768  31789 11264979    1% /home
/dev/loop1        12821  12821        0  100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/core/3887
/dev/loop0         1514   1514        0  100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/skype/13
tmpfs           2038042     20  2038022    1% /run/user/1000

In particular, the line indicating 13% for / seems to contradict what pacman is telling me. There are available inodes where / is mounted. Why doesn't pacman know this?

Last edited by eigenstryker (2018-04-04 17:17:06)

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,743

Website

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

Pacman's complaining about free blocks, not inodes. Please post the output of

df -h

Also, please tell us what filesystem you have used as /.

---

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Mobo: MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX // Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X @4.9GHz // GFX: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT // RAM: 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair DDR4 (@ 3000MHz) // Storage: 1x 3TB HDD, 6x 1TB SSD, 2x 120GB SSD, 1x 275GB M2 SSD

Making lemonade from lemons since 2015.

eigenstryker

Member

From: Seattle, Washington

Registered: 2018-02-16

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

Ah, I see. The distinction between inodes and blocks wasn't clear to me before. Here's the output:

$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
dev             7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /dev
run             7.8G  1.2M  7.8G   1% /run
/dev/sda2        36G   35G     0 100% /
tmpfs           7.8G  169M  7.7G   3% /dev/shm
tmpfs           7.8G     0  7.8G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           7.8G   28K  7.8G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda3       169G   56G  105G  35% /home
/dev/loop1       82M   82M     0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/core/3887
/dev/loop0      104M  104M     0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/skype/13
tmpfs           1.6G  8.0K  1.6G   1% /run/user/1000

This does match what pacman is telling me. And regarding the filesystem: I believe the answer you're looking for is ext4.

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,743

Website

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

I'm going to assume you know what you need to do next then.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … ge_display

Please remember to mark your thread as solved.

---

Sakura:-
Mobo: MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX // Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X @4.9GHz // GFX: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT // RAM: 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair DDR4 (@ 3000MHz) // Storage: 1x 3TB HDD, 6x 1TB SSD, 2x 120GB SSD, 1x 275GB M2 SSD

Making lemonade from lemons since 2015.

eigenstryker

Member

From: Seattle, Washington

Registered: 2018-02-16

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

Actually I am still confused. When I first got this complaint from pacman, I tried to ameliorate the problem by clearing some of the pacman cache, using

paccache -rk 2

This freed up about 200 megabytes. (I don't have the terminal output anymore to paste here, though.) But even after I did this, I got the same complaint about 0 blocks available.

Why didn't this make any blocks available?

(aside: sadly I'm unable download any disk space usage analyzers because of the exact problem I'm facing)

twelveeighty

Member

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 1,317

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

I'd say delete some files until dh -h shows 1 GB or so free and try again.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 18,420

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

What was the output of df -h after you cleared some space?
If you know the blocksize of the filesystem you could see how many blocks of that size are available for instance for 4k blocks

df -b 4096

Edit:

stat -fc %s /

to get the blocksize of /

Last edited by loqs (2018-04-03 18:38:28)

eigenstryker

Member

From: Seattle, Washington

Registered: 2018-02-16

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

What was the output of df -h after you cleared some space?
If you know the blocksize of the filesystem you could see how many blocks of that size are available for instance for 4k blocks

df -b 4096

Edit:

stat -fc %s /

to get the blocksize of /

Here's what I got:

$ stat -fc %s /
4096

$ df -B 4096
Filesystem     4K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
dev              2036398        0   2036398   0% /dev
run              2038042      288   2037754   1% /run
/dev/sda2        9416774  9157814         0 100% /
tmpfs            2038042    65546   1972496   4% /dev/shm
tmpfs            2038042        0   2038042   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs            2038042        7   2038035   1% /tmp
/dev/sda3       44194785 14563305  27369080  35% /home
/dev/loop1         20832    20832         0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/core/3887
/dev/loop0         26624    26624         0 100% /var/lib/snapd/snap/skype/13
tmpfs             407608        2    407606   1% /run/user/1000

I'm puzzled why the available blocks for / doesn't say 258960 ( = 9416774-9157814).

Both /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda3 have blocks not being accounted for in this table.

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

I'd probably account that to the fact that by default ext filesystems reserve 5% of the space as unusable to anything but the root user (and it doesn't show up as available in df) - this can be changed using the tune2fs -m switch.

---

No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,604

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

Logfiles are known to cause space problems. i suggest you check the size of /var/log .

example :

]$ du -h /var/log
144M    /var/log/journal/1d5478d7450747c0c8627f0d4aae7338
8.0K    /var/log/journal/remote
144M    /var/log/journal
80K     /var/log/cups
168K    /var/log/ConsoleKit
4.0K    /var/log/speech-dispatcher
16K     /var/log/clamav
4.0K    /var/log/CCPD
4.0K    /var/log/old
188M    /var/log
$

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 508

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

my proposal:

paccache -rk 1

Also do a restart and a fsck check of the ext4 volume.

You can use a disk space tool from a life usb system - this can be an ubuntu life-cd as well :-)

eigenstryker

Member

From: Seattle, Washington

Registered: 2018-02-16

Posts: 17

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

Ok, my problem was solved by just continuing to free up more and more disk space. I think Slithery's reply,

I'd probably account that to the fact that by default ext filesystems reserve 5% of the space as unusable to anything but the root user (and it doesn't show up as available in df) - this can be changed using the tune2fs -m switch.

explains the confusion I was having about available blocks.

I freed up about 1GB by doing

paccache -rk 1

but this still wasn't enough; I finally realized my 16GB swapfile was on the same partition where / is mounted, and moving this to a different partition led to blocks being shown as available by df.

Thanks to everyone who helped!

bernborgess

Member

Registered: 2024-12-24

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

Sorry for necroposting, but I just had this same problem and the fix has 2 steps:

1. Resize the / partition to accommodate the new packages

# fdisk /dev/the_disk
# Command (m for help): e

2. Resize the filesystem (ext4 in my case):

# resize2fs /dev/the_disk

Then retry the install command

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,604

Re: [SOLVED]Pacman "Partition / too full" error, despite available space

Make that 3 steps as resizing partitions is risky and prone to cause data loss .

Step 0
backup your system

Closing this old thread.

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky