Comment 4 for bug 9459

This is a pretty critical issue if it is the same thing that happened to me. I
downloaded about 100 font files using synaptic: install was interrupted by a
"diskful" error for "filesystem" (I was unable to figure out where the files
were going, but I imagine it is the boot partition?), even though there was
still 10.2 gig in /home. Moreover, on reboot, I could only get in using the
terminal interface. Ultimately I temporarily solved the problem by brute force:
went in in terminal mode, deleted contents of /tmp (not enough) and ultimately
of /usr/cache/apt/archives (which caused other minor problems). When I could
reboot with Gnome, I checked synaptic to see what was wrong, only to be told I
needed to run dkpg --config -a because the pacakge installer had been
interrupted... which started the whole problem over again. And now I can't get
in anymore except by terminal and I can't find anything large to delete.

It seems to me there are three issues here: 1) Ubuntu should never allow the the
filesystem to get so full that it can't reboot Gnome 2) Synaptic should have
some kind of obvious interrupt and undue functionality so users can undue packet
loads that have gone screwy like this; 3) there must be something wrong with
Synaptic if it can ring the whole system to a halt like this.