Consequences of an aborted online update

English Hardware
1

Under YaST I initiated an online update (I would say it could be no longer than a week since the prior, and successful, online update), and as this seemed set to take more than a couple of minutes I left the machine (a Lenovo X220t) and went to work. In the evening I noted YaST was waiting for a decision. I don’t recall the question nor what my response was, but from past experience I am fairly cautious about those situations, and probably didn’t respond with a yes to some message that suggested riusk of doom. Whatever action I took, there were persistent objections, so in the end, thinking I was playing it safe, I aborted the update.

This morning I found Thunderbird not working. I concluded I’d best pursue that update under YaST, but YaST does not open. I tried zypper up… objections


unable to write to /var/lib/sudo/ts/johnd: No space left on device
Bad media attach point: http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/packman/suse/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/

Yet there is plenty of disk space in home and root. Kile is not working, either. What should be the next step? Thanks, JDW

2

On Wed, 06 Apr 2016 14:36:01 +0000, j1d1w1 wrote:

> Yet there is plenty of disk space in home and root. Kile is not working,
> either. What should be the next step? Thanks, JDW

Are you using btrfs on the / partition?

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

3

I accepted the default suggestions (the machine is several years old and I’ve progressed through several versions of openSuSE). Unfortunately I can’t use YaST to find out. JDW

4

On Wed, 06 Apr 2016 16:06:01 +0000, j1d1w1 wrote:

> I accepted the default suggestions (the machine is several years old and
> I’ve progressed through several versions of openSuSE). Unfortunately I
> can’t use YaST to find out. JDW

Open a terminal window and type “mount” - you should be able to see what
the filesystem for / is there.

If it was upgraded, chances are it’s not btrfs, but it would be good to
check.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

5

Thanks… response was mostly like this:


/dev/sda2 on /var/lib/named type btrfs ...

John

6

I attempted a reboot… “systemd-readahead[393]: Failed to open pack file: No space left on device”

Yet before I had shut down, there was plenty of free disk space, and many programs were running normally. Is there any option but to re-install the operating system? JDW

7

On Wed, 06 Apr 2016 16:26:01 +0000, j1d1w1 wrote:

> Thanks… response was mostly like this:
>
> Code:
> --------------------
>
> /dev/sda2 on /var/lib/named type btrfs …
>
> --------------------
>
>
> John

What’s needed is the / partition.

But if it’s btrfs, try running the following:


snapper cleanup number
snapper cleanup timeline

That’ll remove all but the most recent snapshots that are defined in the
policy.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C

8

Thanks Jim – that did it… I have been able to log back in, and YaST appears to be functioning normally. Much appreciated. John

9

On Wed, 06 Apr 2016 23:46:01 +0000, j1d1w1 wrote:

>> That’ll remove all but the most recent snapshots that are defined in
>> the policy.
>>
>> Jim

Glad that helped out. The way that btrfs works, traditional disk free
checking doesn’t give you an accurate view of the free space (has to do
with how the snapshots are managed).

I’ve run into what you saw a couple times myself - ended up tweaking the
snapshots for / so as many weren’t kept. That helped a lot.

Jim

Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C