On Wed 20 Apr 2016 at 06:52:22 +0000, Bonno Bloksma wrote: > This morning I wanted to do an apt-get update / upgrade cycle on my > system. The update went ok, but during the upgrade I got a " No space > left on device" warning. > [...] > Preparing to replace ssh 1:6.0p1-4+deb7u3 (using > .../ssh_1%3a6.0p1-4+deb7u4_all.deb) ... > Unpacking replacement ssh ... > Processing triggers for man-db ... > /usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/8774: No space left on device > Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... > Processing triggers for mime-support ... > [...] > > My /var partition had filled up, it seems out of the 3GB there was > about 2.5GB in /var/cache/apt/archives. The solution was simple, just > an apt-get autoclean, I now have 2.2GB free on my /var partition. ;-) > > But..... What wanted apt write to that mandb and was that important?
Apt calls dpkg and it is during the course of installing with dpkg that the triggering process occurs. You can see this by doing dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives//openssh-server_1%3a6.0p1-4+deb7u4_i386.deb > /usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/8774: No space left on device > Was that that man page for ssh or something like that? Yes. mandb has an interest in what happens in /usr/share/man. Changes there lead to its updating its database. For reasons you give it didn't happen, so dpkg issues a *warning*. Nothing too serious to stop the unpacking and setting up of all the updated packages. > After cleaning up I did another apt-get upgrade but it reported > nothing to do. This is to be expected, surely. All packages are at their newest versions. > So if it failed to update some files why did it > complete anyhow? Would you rather the upgrade came to a halt because of some relatively minor issue? apt-get --reinstall install openssh-server could be run after space is freed up.
