Re: Is apt-get dist-upgrade worth the hassle?
On Sun, Jul 01, 2018 at 01:17:47PM -0700, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> I've been banging my head against the wall trying to compile OpenSSL clients
> on my Jessie laptop (see my recent posting titled "Can't link to OpenSSL on
> my laptop). I've decided to upgrade it to Stretch like my desktop machine,
> which compiles these programs successfully. However, "sudo apt-get
> dist-upgrade" shows the message:
>
> E: You don't have enough free space in /var/cache/apt/archives/.
>
> apt-get autoclean doesn't help; neither does apt-get clean. When I tried
> apt-get autoremove, the upgrade started, but at 99% completion it threw the
> message:
>
> Error writing to output file - write (28: No space left on device)
>
> Sure enough, / is full, with all the fun that that entails.
>
> Is Jessie's default partitioning insufficient for Stretch, or have I somehow
> filled up / with extraneous junk? Would I be better off backing up /home,
> wiping the disk (e.g. with cfdisk) and starting from scratch? (Probably - I
> should probably split /var into a separate partition anyway.)
This is just a classic disk space problem, we can work it out.
Let's look at your options.
1. Grab a USB stick, mkfs.ext4 upon it, and mount it as
/mnt/tmp. Copy /var/cache/apt/archives/ to it. Double
check. rm /var/cache/apt/archives/*. Mount the USB stick
as /var/cache/apt/archives. Proceed with the upgrade.
When done, unmount the USB stick and reboot.
Pros: this should work and not cause you to do much work.
Cheap.
Cons: you might run into disk space problems again.
2. Buy a nice SSD and a USB-SATA cable. Install stretch on it,
keeping to two partitions: / and /home. Copy over /home from
your internal disk. When it's all done, swap the internal
disk for the SSD.
Pros: clean system
nice fast SSD
partitions the size you want them to be
Cons: expensive, relatively slow to do.
3. Backup /home, wipe this disk and reinstall, then restore
/home.
Pros: clean system
cheap
Cons: takes a long time, during which your system is
completely out of commission. If something goes
wrong, you may need to buy a new disk anyway.
> After this experience, I'm gun-shy about upgrading a system in place.
It's just a filesystem-full problem. They're as common as people
not making good backups.
> BTW is it ok to sudo apt-get, or should I su root and run it from an actual
> root prompt?
No difference for this. Differences only come when environment
variables are important.
-dsr-
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