update-manager says "Not enough free disk space" but there is enough space

[olibre]

Unity notification "Update Manager" icon -> Show updates -> Install Updates:

    Not enough free disk space
    The upgrade needs a total of 65,7 M free space on disk '/var/cache'. Please free at least an additional 65,7 M of disk space on '/var/cache'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean'.

There is 715 M available on /var/cache :

$ df -hT
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 ext4 90G 80G 5,4G 94% /
udev devtmpfs 3,9G 4,0K 3,9G 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 789M 8,0K 789M 1% /tmp
tmpfs tmpfs 1,6G 848K 1,6G 1% /run
none tmpfs 5,0M 0 5,0M 0% /run/lock
none tmpfs 3,9G 76K 3,9G 1% /run/shm
tmpfs tmpfs 789M 0 789M 0% /var/tmp
tmpfs tmpfs 789M 656K 788M 1% /var/log
tmpfs tmpfs 789M 0 789M 0% /var/log/apt
tmpfs tmpfs 789M 74M 715M 10% /var/cache

$ sudo du -hsc /var/cache
74M /var/cache
74M total

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  dbus dbus-x11 gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gvfs gvfs-backends gvfs-bin gvfs-common gvfs-daemons gvfs-fuse gvfs-libs isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common kde-zeroconf kdenetwork kget kopete krdc krfb libdbus-1-3 libdbus-1-3:i386
  libgstreamer-plugins-bad0.10-0 libkopete4 openjdk-7-jre openjdk-7-jre-headless openjdk-7-jre-lib php5 php5-cgi php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-gd tzdata tzdata-java
33 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 65,7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 416 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

However this works:
Unity notification "Update Manager" icon -> Install updates

[Tamlin (storyjesse-gmail)]

This bug affects me also.
I'm assuming it is something related to /var/cache being mounted as a tmpfs

I haven't tried the [Unity notification "Update Manager" icon -> Install updates] trick. Do you right click on the icon to get this option? When I run...
     ~$ update-manager
from a terminal it doesn't work even if I right click on the icon. How do I get the unity notification?

When running from the command line I get these warnings...

     ~$ update-manager
     WARNING:root:directory '/var/cache/apt/archives' does not exists
     ERROR:root:Not enough free space: ['/var/cache']
     WARNING:root:directory '/var/cache/apt/archives' does not exists
     ERROR:root:Not enough free space: ['/var/cache']
     gpg: /tmp/tmpGDw2Px/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created

I check manually for /var/cache/apt/archives...

     ~$ ls /var/cache/apt/
     pkgcache.bin srcpkgcache.bin

I create /var/cache/apt/archives...

     ~$ sudo mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives
     [sudo] password for jesse:

I run update-manager again...
     ~$ update-manager

SUCCESS!!!

I try installing updates...

The updates work but I get the following list of error messages in the terminal...

<quote>

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manager:20288): Gtk-WARNING **: /build/buildd/gtk+3.0-3.4.2/./gtk/gtkliststore.c:851: Unable to convert from glong to gint

(update-manag...

[Tamlin (storyjesse-gmail)]

Oops Sorry that workaround should have been...
<quote>
if [ -d "/var/cache/apt/archives" ]; then echo "/var/cache/apt/archives exists"; else mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives; fi || die "Command failed: mkdir /var/cache/apt/archives"
</quote>

note the -d & quotes added to the test... if [ -d "/var/cache/apt/archives" ];
Without this it will always return true and never create the directory even when it doesn't exist.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

Oh, I have only seen it complaining there is not enough space at /boot. This bug is old. Does it happen on any later release than on 12.04?