apt-get -f install No space left on device (Ubuntu 14.04)

Question

I'm tring to run

sudo apt-get -f install

Output:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-4.4.0-53 linux-headers-4.4.0-53-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-57 linux-headers-4.4.0-57-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-59 linux-headers-4.4.0-59-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-62 linux-headers-4.4.0-62-generic
  linux-headers-4.4.0-63 linux-headers-4.4.0-63-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-64 linux-headers-4.4.0-64-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-66 linux-headers-4.4.0-66-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-70 linux-headers-4.4.0-70-generic
  linux-headers-4.4.0-71 linux-headers-4.4.0-71-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-72 linux-headers-4.4.0-72-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-75 linux-headers-4.4.0-75-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-78 linux-headers-4.4.0-78-generic
  linux-headers-4.4.0-79 linux-headers-4.4.0-79-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-81 linux-headers-4.4.0-81-generic linux-headers-4.4.0-83 linux-headers-4.4.0-83-generic
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-4.4.0-89
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-4.4.0-89
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 85 not upgraded.
6 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 9,919 kB of archives.
After this operation, 70.6 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
Get:1 http://eu-central-1.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main amd64 linux-headers-4.4.0-89 all 4.4.0-89.112 [9,919 kB]
Fetched 9,919 kB in 0s (23.4 MB/s)
(Reading database ... 467324 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../linux-headers-4.4.0-89_4.4.0-89.112_all.deb ...
Unpacking linux-headers-4.4.0-89 (4.4.0-89.112) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-4.4.0-89_4.4.0-89.112_all.deb (--unpack):
 unable to create '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.4.0-89/arch/frv/include/asm/switch_to.h.dpkg-new' (while processing './usr/src/linux-headers-4.4.0-89/arch/frv/include/asm/switch_to.h'): No space left on device
No apport report written because the error message indicates a disk full error
                                                                              dpkg-deb: error: subprocess paste was killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-4.4.0-89_4.4.0-89.112_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The output of dpkg -l | grep linux-image is:

ii  linux-image-4.4.0-87-generic     4.4.0-87.110                               amd64        Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
iF  linux-image-4.4.0-89-generic     4.4.0-89.112                               amd64        Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
iU  linux-image-virtual              4.4.0.89.95                                amd64        This package will always depend on the latest minimal generic kernel image.

It seems as if Im currently using version .87 with version .89 half way configured (Status iF)

EDIT:

hard disk space is not the issue, output of df -h is:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root       7.8G  4.9G  2.5G  67% /
devtmpfs        494M     0  494M   0% /dev
tmpfs           496M  4.0K  496M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           496M  6.9M  489M   2% /run
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs           496M     0  496M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           100M     0  100M   0% /run/user/1001
/dev/xvdf       7.8G  153M  7.2G   3% /database

Solution

I can't say what causes the error to come back as disk space but I did run into exactly this issue tonight and I solved it by manually removing some of the old headers and then continuing on normally.

sudo rm -rf /usr/src/linux-headers-4.4.0-5*
sudo rm -rf /usr/src/linux-headers-4.4.0-6*

After this I was able to use apt for everything else like normal.

Comments

[Adonist]

You can use the command: du -csh /* to check the disk space in subfolders and see exactly where you need to delete. You might have loads of logs taking space. To remove old kernels you can simply run: apt-get autoremove --purge

[Charles Green]

You have few choices other than freeing up some disk space as mentioned by @Adonist . Two command that I have found helpful are df -h to determine which disk system is overfull, and sudo du -aBM -d 1 . | sort -nr | head -20 to determine which subdirectories of the current directory are the largest in terms of disk usage

[johan855]

edited the question with the output of df -h, harddisk space doesnt seem to be the issue

[Nullpointer]

@johan855 have you check inode status ? share the output of this command df -i

[johan855]

yes, inodes where completely full, I had to manually remove some of the old packages by specifically writing the names one by one until I had freed around 2-3% more.

[johan855]

Yes, did the same thing and worked for me as well.

[Nathan V]

It would make more sense if /usr/ was on a separate partition but in my case it's just all on one in /. Weird stuff.