updates failed due to insufficient disk space [Solved]

[je55eah]

I created a live usb using the systemd iso created by @dolphin_oracle then I added a partition and I activated frugal static persistence with about 2.5GB allocated for root and 2.5GB allocated for home. When I attempted to update the system there was less than a gig of downloads for updates. The process ran all night and half a day then failed with a message about insufficient disk space. I have attached a photo of gparted opened on that device. The persistence stores seem to be unused. What am I doing wrong?

[dolphin_oracle]

2.5 GB is no where close to what you need to do a full update.

the problem is that while running live, the system will tell you how much additional space will be used, but that is not really adequeate, as the way the layered file system works the ENTIRE file is in the persistence file, so its the size of the original files PLUS the changes that end up in the peristence file. I never run with less than 6gb on persistence, and usually 8 or 12 if I have the room on the stick.

[fehlix]

I created a live usb using the systemd iso created by @dolphin_oracle then I added a partition and I activated frugal static persistence with about 2.5GB allocated for root and 2.5GB allocated for home. When I attempted to update the system there was less than a gig of downloads for updates. The process ran all night and half a day then failed with a message about insufficient disk space. I have attached a photo of gparted opened on that device. The persistence stores seem to be unused. What am I doing wrong?

You won't need an extra "frugal" partition for persistence on LiveUSB. Just create a LiveUSB and using the full stick.
And enable one of the normal (non-frugal) persistence options accordingly.
Try with 4GB rootfs size and do remaster as soon as rootfs got to full or after a big update.
With remaster you will have empty rootfs again. Also you need enough free space for remaster
to hold the old-copies of linuxfs.old and rootfs.old. Which you can remove if the new remaster seem to work,
otherwise you can rollback to the one before remaster.

[je55eah]

@fehlix

I'll give this a shot with the full disk.

Does "enable one of the normal (non-frugal) persistence options" cause it to put the persistence data in homefs and rootfs files or will the data be stored as a regular folder tree full of files somewhere?

[je55eah]

@fehlix
I believe I answered my own question by doing it as the prompts talk about creating those same files, rootfs and homefs. So now I wonder what the point of the frugal options is.

@dolphin_oracle hopefully the new persistence files are large enough. Should I have left space on the drive for rootfs.old and homefs.old or are those files encapsulated in the newly created rootfs and homefs? I am attempting an update now and I will test the rest of it if that is successful.

Something odd about the non-frugal/normal persistence is that I am seeing a lot of disk activity and slowdowns again. I almost thought that it was just as bad as when I had a full partition, but the reads did eventually stop. The strange thing is that the frugal persistence was more performant.

Another oddity was that after enabling persistence the first time I was prompted for an elevated password for the backlight something. Unfortunately I entered the wrong password the first time and then the prompt started loading a second time, but the whole mess went away before it finished and I was unable to attempt to enter the correct password the second time.

[fehlix]

Something odd about the non-frugal/normal persistence is that I am seeing a lot of disk activity and slowdowns again. I almost thought that it was just as bad as when I had a full partition, but the reads did eventually stop. The strange thing is that the frugal persistence was more performant.

FWIW, static persistence would write any changes in "/" root files system during operation onto the USB.
So in case you have enough RAM (and a not too big rootfs), suggest to switch to another "dynamic" persistence option, which loads the overlay rootfs-files into RAM.
ANd with dynamic persistence (using RAM) it would only write to the "slow" USB device on request or if enabled at shut down automatically. The later may not work on this "special-made" systemd LiveUSB. So you may want to save persistence manually before shutdown.

[je55eah]

Thanks for the insights @fehlix

I have successfully updated the system and remastered it. I also created an iso snapshot. I also executed a kernel update. Things are looking good.