Re: apt-get dist-upgrade problem

["David Z. Maze" <dmaze@mit.edu>]

David J Kanter <djkanter@nwu.edu> writes:
DJK> When attempting to upgrade, in pieces, from Slink to Potato, I
DJK> got this error message when typing apt-get dist-upgrade:
DJK> 
DJK> E: Sorry, you don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/
DJK> 
DJK> Do I have too small a partition, is that the problem? What can I
DJK> do to fix this?

That could be part of the problem, yeah; the first time I installed
Debian I only put 30MB in /var and learned to regret that pretty
quickly.  Possible options include:

-- Run 'apt-get clean', if you haven't, to get rid of stale package
   files you don't really need.

-- 'apt-get install' particular packages out of unstable; this will
   download all of their dependencies as well.

-- Symbolically link a directory on a larger partition to
   /var/cache/apt/archives.

-- Mount a bigger/different disk on /var/cache/apt/archives.

-- Repartition so you have a bigger /var (bleah!).

The third option here is probably the easiest and most likely to be
productive.

-- 
David Maze             dmaze@mit.edu          http://donut.mit.edu/dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell