Ubuntu
update-manager package

Free space calculation in /boot too small can cause upgrade failures

Bug #466506 reported by korser on 2009-10-31

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	update-manager (Ubuntu)	Fix Released	High	Unassigned
	Lucid	Fix Released	High	Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: update-manager

While upgrading ubuntu from 9.04 to 9.10 update-manager failed to finish. Almost at end I got an error.

Errors were encountered while processing:
initramfs-tool

lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10

Note: I can only upload one attachment from the web.

Revision history for this message

korser (jamjkv) wrote on 2009-10-31:

term.log Edit (591.3 KiB, text/plain)

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korser (jamjkv) wrote on 2009-10-31:

apt.log Edit (48.1 KiB, text/plain)

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korser (jamjkv) wrote on 2009-10-31:

main.log Edit (54.2 KiB, text/plain)

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Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote on 2009-11-02:

It looks like it is running out of disk space:

Setting up language-pack-kde-fr-base (1:9.10+20091022) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
process 20049: arguments to dbus_move_error() were incorrect, assertion "(dest) == NULL || !dbus_error_is_set ((dest))" failed in file dbus-errors.c line 278.
This is normally a bug in some application using the D-Bus library.
gzip: stdout: No space left on device
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

It looks like the free space calculation did not get it right:
2009-10-30 22:10:46,706 DEBUG Free space on /boot: 17931264
2009-10-30 22:10:46,897 DEBUG linux-image-2.6.31-14-generic (new-install) added with 15728640 to boot space
2009-10-30 22:10:47,757 DEBUG dir '/boot' needs '15728640' of '<DistUpgradeCache.FreeSpace object at 0xacf478c>' (17931264.000000)

Could you please give me the output of "ls -l /boot" ?

Changed in update-manager (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Confirmed
importance:	Undecided → High
summary:	- Could not install the upgrades. installArchives() failed + Free space calculation in /boot too small can cause upgrade failures

Revision history for this message

korser (jamjkv) wrote on 2009-11-09:

yes I had very little space on my /boot.
I cannot get the output of "ls -l /boot" since I made space before seeing your post.

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Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote on 2009-11-13:

Thanks, could you still please give me the current output? I wonder if there is anything unusual in your system that makes the initramfs bigger than normal or something.

Revision history for this message

Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel) wrote on 2010-02-11:

Fixed in the latest update-manager release

update-manager (1:0.132) lucid; urgency=low

  [ Michael Vogt ]
...
  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeCache.py:
    - when showing the demoted packages, skip packages that
      are automatic installed
    - improve performance on the removal checks by making use of
      the auto removable information more agressively
    - increase space required by the kernel (it grew)