dpkg unable to write to /var/lib/dpkg/status, /var partition full

["Kyle Barbour" <kylebarbour@gmail.com>]

Hello there,

I booted up my system this morning and tried to install something with
aptitude, only to get the error message:

W: Could not lock the cache file.  Opening in read-only mode; any
changes you make to the states of packages will NOT be preserved!
E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a'
to correct the problem.

So, I tried running dpkg --configure -a, which gave me:

dpkg: failed to write status record about `vlc-nox' to
`/var/lib/dpkg/status': No space left on device

I ran df, and I found that my /var partition is entirely full (1.9 GB
of 1.9 GB). I don't know why - last night I ran 'aptitude
safe-upgrade', maybe that has something to do with it? I'm not sure
how to fix this problem - I'm assuming that I should pare down some
files, but I'm not sure which ones or how to prevent this from
happening again. Any thoughts?

Thanks for the help,
Kyle Barbour