3 ms·

I had this issue in October 2018 as documented in this Stack Overflow question, whose text I’ll paste below. I was lucky: I had an additional APFS partition th

I had this issue in October 2018 as documented in this Stack Overflow question, whose text I’ll paste below. I was lucky: I had an additional APFS partition that I could remove, thus freeing up disk space. Took me a while to figure out, during which time I was in a proper panic. --- https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/338721/disk-full-terminal-in-recovery-mode-won-t-delete-files-boot-kernel-panics https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/338721/disk-full-t... I’m in a pickle here. macOS Mojave, just updated the other day. I managed to fill my disk up while creating a .dmg, and the system froze. I rebooted. Kernel panic. Boot to Recovery mode. Mount the disk. Open Terminal. –bash–3.2# rm /path/to/large/file rm: /path/to/large/file: No space left on device Essentially the same issue as this Unix thread from ‘08! https://www.unix.com/linux/69889-unable-remove-file-using-rm-disk-space-full.html https://www.unix.com/linux/69889-unable-remove-file-using-rm... I’ve tried echo x > /path/to/large/file, no good. It’s borked. Does anyone have any suggestions that aren’t “wipe the drive and restore from your backup”?

bombcar 3y ago
Sounds like creating a sliver of an extra partition of a gig or so might be valuable insurance. Kind of like the old Unix file systems that would reserve 5% for root.
- pixelfarmer 3y ago
  Since the SSD days (I started like 15 years ago with that) I keep a bit of space empty for two reasons: Emergency situations where you may need some extra space and to give SSDs a bit more room to relocate blocks to (they have a certain amount internally reserved already).
bouke 3y ago
With APFS this is not as straightforward though, as containers are only allocated when written too.
djmips 3y ago
I see in that stackexchange post, there's since been another alternative potential solution where you delete you virtual memory partition and if it's large enough it can give you back enough space to allow deleting of files to happen.

bombcar 3y ago

Sounds like creating a sliver of an extra partition of a gig or so might be valuable insurance. Kind of like the old Unix file systems that would reserve 5% for root.

pixelfarmer 3y ago
Since the SSD days (I started like 15 years ago with that) I keep a bit of space empty for two reasons: Emergency situations where you may need some extra space and to give SSDs a bit more room to relocate blocks to (they have a certain amount internally reserved already).

bouke 3y ago

With APFS this is not as straightforward though, as containers are only allocated when written too.

djmips 3y ago

I see in that stackexchange post, there's since been another alternative potential solution where you delete you virtual memory partition and if it's large enough it can give you back enough space to allow deleting of files to happen.