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I did a system update with sudo apt-get update and rebooted. After the reboot an error came up showing that i'm out of disk space. was barly able to access my desktop. I checked the space util and noticed that there are 2 very large files (over 20GB) in the directory: /var/lib/apt/list/partial/

  • za.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid-updates_main_binary-amd64_Packages.bz2 (21.2 GB)
  • security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_vivid-security_universe_binary-amd64_Packages.bz2 (21.2 GB)

I managed to delete them and rebooted the system and all was fine. Then I did an update again and the same issue occured again.

Is this a bug?

System info : Ubuntu 15.04 - Daily updated

Carl H
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Shawn Botha
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3 Answers3

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If you look, for example for your first file here, you'll notice that the size of these files is barely 100KB, so you have something pesky going on—probably a network failure or something like that. Have you tried to check the content of these monster files? Is the filesystem clean?

Try to remove all the cached packages:

sudo apt-get clean

Then repair the database:

sudo apt-get install -f

Finally repeat the update and upgrade:

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get upgrade
Synetech
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Rmano
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I've experienced this bug that made my computer runs very slow. At first I thought it's because the new ppa I've just added. But then I discover that it's a bug that has been confirmed in the launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/vivid/+source/apt/+bug/1445239

It turns out there's a problem in the ServerState::HeaderLine() where it parses

Content-Range header:

Content-Range: bytes 587-600/601

And in HttpServerState::RunData() there's a code In.Limit(Size - StartPos); that returns a -1 hence infinite loop for the MaxGet.

Go check the thread for full info.

Launchpad user Anton Blanchard and the others have made a patch for the bug, but it's still in the dev distro of Willy Werewolf and waiting for the developers of Vivid to fix this problem.

For now I suggest to be careful when running the apt-get update and be standby to cancel it if the lists/partial folder gets to grown into the gigabytes size. Deleting the folder will temporarily fixed the problem for me. Or you could schedule a cron jobs for it.

gnomeria
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sudo apt-get update updates the package manager with the latest versions of software - this is what the two .bz2 files are. It does not actually install new software.

You need to follow sudo apt-get update with sudo apt-get upgrade, which will install the latest versions of everything.

You can combine them into one command with

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Carl H
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  • I've tried doing the "upgrade" afterwards, but i still get an error :

    Reading package lists... Error! E: Write error - write (28: No space left on device) E: IO Error saving source cache E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

    As soon as i run the update command the 2 files gets rebuild by apt-get.

     – Shawn Botha May 28 '15 at 08:33
  • How much disk space do you have? Please [edit] your question to include the output of df -h. – Carl H May 28 '15 at 08:36
  • After delete the 2 files i can run the : sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade - command but it will not complete the upgrade due to the error – Shawn Botha May 28 '15 at 08:39