Not enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives

gb

Hi,

I just got my M10 installed with Xenial release candidate 4 version.
I wipe it so it is empty.

I want to try to install some packages via apt-get install, so I make it writable following these steps.

But when I try to install I get the following error.

phablet@ubuntu-phablet:~$ sudo apt-get install sl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
sl
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 12 not upgraded.
Need to get 23.5 kB of archives.
After this operation, 71.7 kB of additional disk space will be used.
E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/.

I looked how partitions were being used (df -h)

/dev/disk/by-partlabel/userdata 9.2G 3.0G 6.2G 33% /userdata
/dev/loop0 2.0G 1.9G 0 100% /

So the problem seems to be / partition is full since the very beginning.

Other people are facing similar issues, but it seems we haven´t find the solution yet.

Any suggestions?

advocatux

@gb making the system rw is not really a good idea for many reasons. If you want to use apt it's better to do it inside a contained environment, like Libertine for example.

https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/userguide/dailyuse/libertine.html

gb

Thanks for the tip @advocatux
I followed the instructions and I have a container working and I could install packages.

Akito

Any solution to this? I don't want to use this workaround because I want to use the system as natively as possible. Ideally, I would prefer to not have unnecessary /dev/loop partitions in the first place.

pparent

sudo rm -r /var/cache/apt
sudo tune2fs -m 0 /dev/loop0

dobey

@pparent This is not a good idea to do.

However, if one really needs to install debs in rootfs for some reason, such as using ubports-qa to test changes to system components from PRs, one can bind mount a directory in user writable partition on top of /var/cache/apt/archives

mkdir -p ~/aptcache
sudo mount --bind /home/phablet/aptcache /var/cache/apt

However, there will still be plenty of other issues if one wants to try to install from apt in rootfs, which is not supported, and it is strongly advised against doing so.

pparent

@pparent This is not a good idea to do.

No disrespect, but I think this is why I will choose pureOS in the long run, whenever I receive the phone and it is usable.

As users I want to be able to do the same things we can do on our computer, and be in control of our device, without being artificially limited, and not being sandboxed into a container. Otherwise I would use Android!

dobey

@pparent I think you will be somewhat disappointed by that too, because no matter what, the phone is still not a PC.

There is a huge difference between Android and UT. The way UT works is because it has to run on top of Android kernels, and because it is meant to provide a more secure alternative to Android, that does provide the ability to run legacy linux apps in a container too.

There are a whole lot of things about traditional PC Linux distros that just do not make sense to keep doing in the modern world, regardless of device. And pureOS isn't going to change that on their phone.

pparent

@dobey

Actually I got the above problem trying to install a console program (dig) to do some in-field testing. To me all console programs make perfect sense being run on phones as they are on desktop, server, router, super-calculator, robot ... . And they can be used to really control the system.

On the other hand, on the graphical side, lately purism seems to make a great job adapting gnome apps for phone, so I guess we just have to wait and see.

dobey

@pparent said in Not enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives:

Actually I got the above problem trying to install a console program (dig) to do some in-field testing. To me all console programs make perfect sense being run on phones as they are on desktop, server, router, super-calculator, robot ... . And they can be used to really control the system.

There is nothing preventing you from using CLI tools. Installing apps with legacy insecure packaging, is done in libertine. You can install and run whatever CLI apps you want, in there too.

But it doesn't change the facts.

pparent

@advocatux said in Not enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives:

@gb making the system rw is not really a good idea for many reasons. If you want to use apt it's better to do it inside a contained environment, like Libertine for example.

Yes but I want to be able to use CLI tools on the real system to control the real system, control the machine, not be sandboxed in a container.

Can you explain what is insecure about "legacy packaging" (i.e apt ), and why it would be more insecure on the phone than it is on a laptop or a server?

advocatux

I want to be able to use CLI tools on the real system to control the real system, control the machine, not be sandboxed in a container.

@pparent there's an official & supported way of doing things but of course you can do whatever you want with your device, you have complete freedom. Just don't expect any help when things go south

You can make the root filesystem rw, you can resize partitions, you can use any repo or ppa that you want (as long as the packages are compiled for armhf), etc but you're at your own risk with that.

dobey

@pparent said in Not enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives:

Can you explain what is insecure about "legacy packaging" (i.e apt ), and why it would be more insecure on the phone than it is on a laptop or a server?

It is not truly secure on a laptop or server either. It has nothing to do with the device. With dpkg you are giving anyone who creates a package root access to your system, when you install that package.

As I've said many times before, phones are not PCs, and UT is not a traditional PC Linux distro. As @advocatux you are of course welcome to do whatever you want to your own device, with UT on it (it's yours, and UT is open source), but UT is not designed or built in this manner, and any changes you make are your own responsibility, and if installing updates break that (they will at some point), you will have deal with it yourself. If what you want is a traditional Linux distro on hardware that looks like a phone, there are other distributions working more towards that goal, such as postmarket OS. However, we are attempting to build a system usable for phones here, which is secure.

dj

@dobey : This solution really helped for me to fix this issue