Ubuntu: apt-get -f fails, "no space left on device", apt-get autoremove doesn't work.

After getting this issue on two different servers, I thought I’d write a tutorial for everyone else.

What’s the problem?

First, you try to install some packages, either with apt-get install or apt-get update. For some reason, it fails with an error like this one:

You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-112-generic : Depends: linux-image-4.4.0-112-generic but it is not going to be installed
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-93-generic : Depends: linux-image-4.4.0-93-generic but it is not going to be installed
 linux-image-generic : Depends: linux-image-4.4.0-112-generic but it is not going to be installed
 Recommends: thermald but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

So you type apt-get -f install, and that fails too, this time with an error like this one:

Unpacking linux-image-4.4.0-112-generic (4.4.0-112.135) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-image-4.4.0-112-generic_4.4.0-112.135_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 cannot copy extracted data for './boot/System.map-4.4.0-112-generic' to '/boot/System.map-4.4.0-112-generic.dpkg-new': failed to write (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)
...
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

You do a bit of research and find something about running out of inodes, so you type df -i, but you are using under 10% of the inodes on all devices. Another post suggests running apt-get autoremove, but that gives you the same error message as before:

You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-112-generic : Depends: linux-image-4.4.0-112-generic but it is not installed
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-93-generic : Depends: linux-image-4.4.0-93-generic but it is not installed
 linux-image-generic : Depends: linux-image-4.4.0-112-generic but it is not installed
 Recommends: thermald but it is not installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

So what’s the f***ing deal?!

How to solve that problem

Long story short, you don’t have enough space to fit the new Linux kernel, so you have to delete some of the old ones. You can delete those manually, but it’s a long, tricky manual process, and if you’re like me, you only understand half of what’s going on and you just want the damn thing to work.

You might have found this solution or a variant of it, but once more you’ll get one of the error messages above:

Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages

Well, you were almost there! All you need is to use dpkg instead of apt-get purge.

Before you try that, run this command to see which packages will be removed. This command has no side effects and will not delete anything:

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d'

Make sure that your current kernel version is not in that list. You can see your kernel version by running uname -a.

Once you are sure that you want to delete these kernel files, run this command to run dpkg --remove on each of them:

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs dpkg --remove

After that, you can run apt-get -f install without problems, then do whatever you wanted to do in the first place. See, Linux isn’t that complicated!

Help! That didn’t work!

If you run into an error like this one:

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 gzip 1
...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-31-generic
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-47-generic
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-75-generic
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-79-generic
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-81-generic
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-83-generic
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-87-generic
 linux-image-extra-4.4.0-89-generic

…don’t panic! Some of the kernels will likely removed, so you can run apt-get -f autoremove to clear up some space, and then you can run the long command above again.

tl;dr

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs dpkg --remove
apt-get -f install