[Bug 1089195] Re: linux-headers will eat your inodes on LTS.

Sun Jun 29 21:07:51 UTC 2014

This is really annoying bug. Even experienced user who never encountered
a problem with consumed inodes will spend a lot of time finding the
cause of the problem. The error message "No space left on device" does
not suggest that the problem is with inodes.

The update process should certainly remove very old kernels
automatically by default or show an explanatory warning.

There are many examples of users which faced this problem:
http://askubuntu.com/q/317763/67132
http://askubuntu.com/q/388449/67132
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2039786
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2206534

See also related Bug #690911 Installation without formatting fails to
remove old kernels

Attempts (certainly imperfect) to remove old kernels automatically:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Lubuntu/Documentation/RemoveOldKernels#Automatic
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1961409&page=3&p=11859290#post11859290

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1089195

Title:
  linux-headers will eat your inodes on LTS.

Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Hello all,

  Summary
  -----------------
  Both linux-image-* and linux-headers-* are installed every time you upgrade the kernel. However, they are never removed by any maintenance process.

  Every linux-headers-*-generic-pae package has approx. 6,700 files on
  it. Regular headers packages have even more files: around 11,700 files
  each.

  Although these packages' files won't occupy much space, after some
  years (think LTS installation), they will "eat" all the inodes on your
  root partition.

  The first effect you'll encounter will be the you are unable to
  upgrade your system.

  This is a situation that will affect all users, however it will be a
  greater problem regular non-technical user.

  There's no simple, high-level tool to solve this problem.

  Case Study
  ---------------
  I have a 2-year-and-8-months old 10.04 installation. I have a ~10GB root partition, which is double of the minimum recommend (5GB).

      $ df -h --type=ext4
      Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
      /dev/sda5             9.4G  6.2G  2.8G  70% /
      /dev/sda6              94G   45G   45G  51% /home

  It looks that I had plenty of space left to upgrade, but I got this
  error while upgrading:

      unable to create `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-45/arch/s390/include/asm/nmi.h.dpkg-new'
      (while processing `./usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-45/arch/s390/include/asm/nmi.h'): No space left on device

  It was because of I was running out of inodes:

      $ df -i /
      Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
      /dev/sda5             625856  618015    7841   99% /

  Why? Because the huge amount of linux-headers files:

      $ find /usr/src -type f | wc -l
      355112

  That is more than three hundred and fifty thousand files!

  These are the packages that I removed:

  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-21 [2.6.32-21.32]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-22-generic-pae [2.6.32-22.36]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-22 [2.6.32-22.36]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-23-generic-pae [2.6.32-23.37]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-23 [2.6.32-23.37]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic-pae [2.6.32-24.43]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-24 [2.6.32-24.43]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-25-generic-pae [2.6.32-25.45]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-25 [2.6.32-25.45]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-26-generic-pae [2.6.32-26.48]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-26 [2.6.32-26.48]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-27-generic-pae [2.6.32-27.49]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-27 [2.6.32-27.49]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-28-generic-pae [2.6.32-28.55]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-28 [2.6.32-28.55]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-29-generic-pae [2.6.32-29.58]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-29 [2.6.32-29.58]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-30-generic-pae [2.6.32-30.59]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-30 [2.6.32-30.59]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-31-generic-pae [2.6.32-31.61]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-31 [2.6.32-31.61]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-32-generic-pae [2.6.32-32.62]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-32 [2.6.32-32.62]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-33-generic-pae [2.6.32-33.72]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-33 [2.6.32-33.72]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-34-generic-pae [2.6.32-34.77]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-34 [2.6.32-34.77]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-35-generic-pae [2.6.32-35.78]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-35 [2.6.32-35.78]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-36-generic-pae [2.6.32-36.79]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-36 [2.6.32-36.79]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-37-generic-pae [2.6.32-37.81]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-37 [2.6.32-37.81]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-38-generic-pae [2.6.32-38.83]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-38 [2.6.32-38.83]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-39-generic-pae [2.6.32-39.86]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-39 [2.6.32-39.86]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-40-generic-pae [2.6.32-40.87]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-40 [2.6.32-40.87]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-41-generic-pae [2.6.32-41.94]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-41 [2.6.32-41.94]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-42-generic-pae [2.6.32-42.96]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-42 [2.6.32-42.96]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-43-generic-pae [2.6.32-43.97]
  Purg linux-headers-2.6.32-43 [2.6.32-43.97]
  Purg linux-headers-generic-pae [2.6.32.45.52]
  Purg linux-image-2.6.32-42-generic-pae [2.6.32-42.96]
  Purg linux-image-2.6.32-43-generic-pae [2.6.32-43.97]

  Then, problem solved:

      $ find /usr/src/ -type f | wc -l
      28276

      $ ls /usr/src/
      linux-headers-2.6.32-44              linux-headers-2.6.32-45-generic-pae
      linux-headers-2.6.32-44-generic-pae  nvidia-current-195.36.24
      linux-headers-2.6.32-45              virtualbox-ose-3.1.6

      $ df -i --type=ext4
      Filesystem            Inodes   IUsed   IFree IUse% Mounted on
      /dev/sda5             625856  192891  432965   31% /
      /dev/sda6            6225920   95025 6130895    2% /home

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