No space left on device in /var

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Services fail writes and package operations stop because /var partition is full.

Environment & Reproduction

Ubuntu 16.04 systems with heavy logging, cache growth, or orphaned packages.

Root Cause Analysis

Accumulated logs, package cache, or application artifacts exhaust available space.

Quick Triage

Measure disk usage hotspots and identify fastest safe cleanup targets.

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Analyze directory growth under /var/log, /var/cache, and app-specific data paths.

Solution – Primary Fix

Purge stale cache, rotate/prune logs, and remove unused packages to free capacity.

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Expand filesystem or relocate high-growth data directories to larger volumes.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Sustained free space threshold is restored and writes succeed normally.

Rollback Plan

Recover pruned logs from backup if forensic retention is required.

Prevention & Hardening

Set log retention policies and alerting for partition usage thresholds.

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

ENOSPC errors, journal write failures, and apt cache expansion issues.

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

View all Ubuntu 16.04 LTS tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

Ubuntu disk housekeeping and capacity planning references.