Adept should check diskspace

Version: (using KDE KDE 3.5.2)
Installed from: Debian stable Packages
OS: Linux

Upgraded Kubuntu to Dapper from Breezy by changing Breezy to Dapper in sources.list and running Adept to fetch and upgrade everything. Unfortunately the disk went full (more than 2 gigs in /var/cache/apt). X was then not properly installed leaving me at the command prompt and struggling for 2 days to find out what was the problem and how to solve it. (I was finally able to enter the shell as root, and thus found were the big files were) I used apt to clean the cache (apt-get clean)

I suggest
1) If during the process of installation Adept sees the disk getting full it should ask the user what to do, possibly reinstalling the old programs.
2) Adept should warn when the \var\apt\cache gets above a certain size, and offer the opprtunity to reduce the cache by removing the oldest entries. Eventually you could configure it to never use more than X% of free space for cache.

Adept should also warn the user if an upgrade or an installation would exceed the disk space.

Bertram <email address hidden>

The good news is that I got a proper "disk full" warning and a graceful exit when trying to Upgrade from Edgy to Feisty yesterday (2007-09-27). So it looks like the Distribution Upgrade part of Adept is fixed.

The bad news is that I still had a very similar problem to the one described in this Bug with a regular Update (not an Upgrade) in Edgy. I had not connected Kubuntu to the Internet in a while. When I connected it again, Adept found a large number of packages requiring an Update. It crashed and exited with a confusing error message before updating the Linux Kernel Headers to 2.6.17-12, though (sorry, I should have written down exactly what the error message was). I realized that I was probably low on disk space, but the error message did not say that clearly enough. Everything seemed to be OK for the rest of that session. But after restarting, all I got was the Login screen -- after entering any valid User ID and Password, the Kubuntu Desktop would not load, only the Login screen would return. It did not matter what options I selected in the Login screen.

I restarted again, and got into Recovery Mode from the GRUB menu. From the Root command prompt, tried to run APT-GET UPDATE, then APT-GET REMOVE WINE to try to make room by removing the WINE package that I was no longer using. I got an error message suggesting that I run APT-GET -f -CLEAN. This time, I got an error message saying, in effect, no room to install Linux Kernel Headers to 2.6.17-12.

I rebooted from a Live CD and used a Partition Editor to make the main Linux (/) partition larger. Rebooted again, went back into GRUB > Recovery Mode, and ran APT-GET -f -CLEAN again. This time it worked OK. After rebooting once more, I was finally able to log back into the Kubuntu Desktop.

If Adept had only warned me that disk space was too low before trying to install the Linux Kernel Headers, I may have been able to save a lot of time.

Anyway, after I got my Desktop back, I tried to do the suggested Distribution Upgrade to Feisty, and got a proper error message about low disk space (I still didn't have the over 600 MB that this upgrade would have required). And I still have a working Edgy system.

So the Distribution Upgrade part of Adept handled low disk space properly in Edgy, but the regular Update did not.

I've just noticed that the Severity of this bug is rated as "Wishlist". To me, it was as bad as a Crash, because Adept did not exit with the proper error, and
the system was effectively stuck at the Login stage after restart. I spent a lot more time recovering from this issue than I would have expected with a merely "Wishlist" item. I would like to ask that this Bug's severity be upgraded. Thanks in advance for your help.

I agree that the severity is higher than wishlist. If we want people who are only moderately technically interested to have a good time using open source, this is exactly the type of errors that must be avoided

I'm not adding this to 3.0, since there's too much to do already. I'd also add that apt archive cache should be handled transparently (cleaning up obsolete stuff, refusing download if it would fill up the filesystem).

Adept has been in the unmaintained state for a few years. Use muon[1] as replacement .

[1] https://launchpad.net/muon