Installation fails because of "lack of disk space"

**paul9** · September 24th, 2012

Hello,

i am repeatedly experiencing errors while trying to install packets with apt-get. It always says that there would be no memory left on the device. But df says that there should be enough memory. The last time i tried to install, the packet needed less than one MB while df said that there was at leasts 1/2 GB on each partition of the system. I am clueless. Does anyone knows what the intention of Ubuntu is here?

I am using Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

Paul

**Bucky Ball** · September 24th, 2012

Welcome.

Yea, you probably need to make a little more headroom than that. Once you start getting below a Gb things can get strange so doesn't matter what size your app is, probably still get the problem.

And remember, the app, once installed, might take up x amount of space on disk but installation may require more than x as data is loaded to disk for the install then removed when it's no longer required.

**paul9** · September 24th, 2012

Originally Posted by Bucky Ball

... a little more headroom than that ...

Thanks a lot for your answer, Bucky Ball. Can you say on which directory that headroom is needed?---So i could try to provide some additional space there.

Paul

**Bucky Ball** · September 24th, 2012

The partition you are trying to install to rather than any specific directory I'd say. At a guess /, your root partition.

**paul9** · September 25th, 2012

My idea was, knowing the directory which Ubuntu uses to do the package installing, that i could mount another partition there. So there would be the required space. On the other hand i do not see how to provide additional space directly with /, since it is now fixed in my system. Anyway, now i have a clue what is happening.

Thanks for answering, Bucky Ball.
Paul

**Bucky Ball** · September 25th, 2012

Originally Posted by paul9

... i do not see how to provide additional space directly with /, since it is now fixed in my system.

It is reasonably straight forward. As the partition you want to resize is / boot from the LiveCD>Get to the desktop>Launch Gparted>Right Click the Partition>Unmount + Resize.

If you make a plan, like shrinking the partition next to /, you might be able to come up with something. But make a plan.

You can unmount and resize partitions other than / from the hard drive install but easier and safer IMHO this way.