Error: "No Space Left on Device", but there is space

Bazzite
1

Hi, I am hoping someone can help here. My son’s Framework laptop is running Bazzite and keeps having a problem where it reports “No space left on device”. This happens a lot, and affects mostly Flatpak apps, but seems to be causing issues doing rpm-ostree updates and ujust updates.

I have Googled this a lot, and it doesn’t seem to be inodes, drive space, or logs. I have tried running commands like ujust clean-system and rpm-ostree cleanup -r, but they don’t report much, and although sometimes they fix the problem temporarily it soon comes back. The only ostree layer on top of the base layer is for Megasync. I have never pinned anything that I’m aware of.

Any help is much appreciated.

Here is some info about the system:

df -h

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
composefs        34M   34M     0 100% /
/dev/nvme0n1p3  465G  328G  136G  71% /etc
devtmpfs         16G     0   16G   0% /dev
tmpfs            16G   65M   16G   1% /dev/shm
efivarfs        148K  139K  4.9K  97% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
tmpfs           6.2G  2.5M  6.2G   1% /run
tmpfs           1.0M     0  1.0M   0% /run/credentials/systemd-journald.service
tmpfs            16G  8.6M   16G   1% /tmp
/dev/nvme0n1p3  465G  328G  136G  71% /var
/dev/nvme0n1p2  974M  515M  392M  57% /boot
/dev/nvme0n1p3  465G  328G  136G  71% /var/home
/dev/nvme0n1p1  599M   13M  587M   3% /boot/efi
tmpfs           1.0M     0  1.0M   0% /run/credentials/systemd-resolved.service
tmpfs           3.1G  148K  3.1G   1% /run/user/1000

df -i

Filesystem      Inodes IUsed                IFree IUse% Mounted on
composefs            -     - 18446744073709344813     - /
/dev/nvme0n1p3       0     0                    0     - /etc
devtmpfs       3985393   766              3984627    1% /dev
tmpfs          4017025    87              4016938    1% /dev/shm
efivarfs             0     0                    0     - /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
tmpfs           819200  1646               817554    1% /run
tmpfs             1024     2                 1022    1% /run/credentials/systemd-journald.service
tmpfs          1048576    75              1048501    1% /tmp
/dev/nvme0n1p3       0     0                    0     - /var
/dev/nvme0n1p2   65536    36                65500    1% /boot
/dev/nvme0n1p3       0     0                    0     - /var/home
/dev/nvme0n1p1       0     0                    0     - /boot/efi
tmpfs             1024     2                 1022    1% /run/credentials/systemd-resolved.service
tmpfs           803405   276               803129    1% /run/user/1000

rpm-ostree status

State: idle
Deployments:
● ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-gnome:stable
                   Digest: sha256:508ab6746dce3bd77c147c837615032ba9d8487d623353de2b94a00661c72cb8
                  Version: 43.20260217 (2026-02-17T20:55:19Z)
            LocalPackages: lact-libadwaita-0.5.4-0.x86_64 megasync-5.3.0-11.1.x86_64

  ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-gnome:stable
                   Digest: sha256:508ab6746dce3bd77c147c837615032ba9d8487d623353de2b94a00661c72cb8
                  Version: 43.20260217 (2026-02-17T20:55:19Z)
            LocalPackages: lact-libadwaita-0.5.4-0.x86_64 megasync-5.3.0-11.1.x86_64

sudo tree -h

[  338]  .
├── [  322]  anaconda
│   ├── [  48K]  anaconda.log
│   ├── [ 3.7K]  dbus.log
│   ├── [ 1.3M]  journal.log
│   ├── [    0]  ks-script-63l8fi2f.log
│   ├── [   40]  ks-script-e4w_2sbr.log
│   ├── [   88]  ks-script-ol4x50jh.log
│   ├── [  28K]  lorax-packages.log
│   ├── [  35K]  packaging.log
│   ├── [ 2.4K]  program.log
│   ├── [ 219K]  storage.log
│   ├── [ 1.2M]  syslog
│   └── [  39K]  X.log
├── [  106]  audit
│   ├── [ 6.6M]  audit.log
│   ├── [ 8.0M]  audit.log.1
│   ├── [ 8.0M]  audit.log.2
│   ├── [ 8.0M]  audit.log.3
│   └── [ 8.0M]  audit.log.4
├── [  19M]  boot.log
├── [  14K]  btmp
├── [ 9.4K]  btmp-20260202
├── [    0]  chrony
├── [    0]  cups
├── [  21K]  dnf5.log
├── [  780]  firewalld
├── [    0]  gdm
├── [    0]  httpd
├── [   64]  journal
│   └── [  898]  520ce43a52204867ac74cfabf092d5d8
│       ├── [  64M]  system@00064b46ea333fff-9e9ce5ae126d8af6.journal~
│       ├── [  16M]  system@00064baac8fe3209-55264ae7d5cd659b.journal~
│       ├── [ 8.0M]  system@00064bab85ef65af-ca9066c06b255319.journal~
│       ├── [ 8.0M]  system@55aaf3cb0bec4483a69dfef07586d34e-00000000006816f7-00064baac8a13d60.journal
│       ├── [  16M]  system.journal
│       ├── [  40M]  user-1000@00064baac967c1f6-1b0c0f26c3fd93da.journal~
│       ├── [ 8.0M]  user-1000@00064bab86a8f9f4-d4a45382f3168312.journal~
│       ├── [ 8.0M]  user-1000.journal
│       └── [ 8.0M]  user-524288@55aaf3cb0bec4483a69dfef07586d34e-000000000065c6af-00064b18de4cbfa1.journal
├── [ 285K]  lastlog
├── [    0]  libvirt
├── [   18]  passim
│   └── [ 2.0K]  audit.log
├── [    0]  ppp
├── [    0]  private
├── [    0]  qemu-ga
├── [   39]  README -> ../../usr/share/doc/systemd/README.logs
├── [    6]  samba
│   └── [    0]  old
├── [  27K]  snapper.log
├── [    0]  speech-dispatcher
├── [  114]  sssd
│   ├── [  479]  sssd_kcm.log
│   ├── [ 1.1K]  sssd_kcm.log-20260220.gz
│   └── [ 7.9K]  sssd_kcm.log-20260227
├── [   88]  tuned
│   ├── [ 898K]  tuned.log
│   ├── [1024K]  tuned.log.1
│   ├── [1024K]  tuned.log.2
│   └── [  69K]  tuned-ppd.log
└── [1010K]  wtmp

19 directories, 43 files
2

To anyone expierencing this issue.

you are out of files.

Bascially bazzite has millions of files and you can run into a “Innode” issue.
Its not the space its the AMOUNT of files on the disk that causes this.

Try deleting some files and you will see things start to work again.

Im putting this here for people who are searching this on google so it can be indexed for other people to read.

Trust me.. start deleting temp stuff and you will see things start to work."

also DO NOT RESTART your computer, as it will be stuck on a black screen on bazzite .. if you are already at this stage and its “To late” then while your at said black screen hit ctrl+alt+f3 to go to a different TTY. log in. and then cd and search for files. using rm to remove them.

I want you to take a look at my drive and just how many files there are

sudo find /var -maxdepth 4 -type d | while read dir; do echo "$(find "$dir" -type f 2>/dev/null | wc -l) -> $dir"; done | sort -n

60764 -> /var/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew
66875 -> /var/home/bazzite/Documents/soyjaktycoonNEWmeshfolder
68722 -> /var/lib/flatpak/runtime/org.gnome.Platform
70321 -> /var/lib/flatpak/.removed
73652 -> /var/lib/flatpak/runtime/org.freedesktop.Sdk
75380 -> /var/lib/flatpak/app
76093 -> /var/mnt/93436a1c-b79f-4354-9b89-42b0bc398a84/GTAV Source/src
94567 -> /var/lib/flatpak/runtime/org.kde.Platform
107223 -> /var/home/bazzite/.cache
138757 -> /var/mnt/93436a1c-b79f-4354-9b89-42b0bc398a84/GTAV Source
141724 -> /var/mnt/93436a1c-b79f-4354-9b89-42b0bc398a84/Samsung
146649 -> /var/home/bazzite/Documents/testtt
158060 -> /var/mnt/93436a1c-b79f-4354-9b89-42b0bc398a84/SteamLibrary/steamapps
158076 -> /var/mnt/93436a1c-b79f-4354-9b89-42b0bc398a84/SteamLibrary
161810 -> /var/home/bazzite/Unity
161810 -> /var/home/bazzite/Unity/Hub
174426 -> /var/home/bazzite/Games
214113 -> /var/lib/flatpak/repo/objects
214484 -> /var/lib/flatpak/repo
231459 -> /var/home/bazzite/Downloads
318538 -> /var/home/bazzite/.var
318538 -> /var/home/bazzite/.var/app
337258 -> /var/lib/flatpak/runtime
394173 -> /var/home/bazzite/Documents/sony3test
509716 -> /var/mnt
509716 -> /var/mnt/93436a1c-b79f-4354-9b89-42b0bc398a84
685745 -> /var/home/bazzite/.local/share
703757 -> /var/lib/flatpak
704667 -> /var/lib
724714 -> /var/home/bazzite/.local <<<<
819690 -> /var/home/bazzite/Documents
2865599 -> /var/home/bazzite
2926393 -> /var/home
4141328 -> /var

There are over 700,000 files for JUST flatpak configuration stuff in the local.
We can clear them because alot of cache files that are from UNINSTALLED software. thats right.. when uninstalling software. Flatpak will NOT delete all the data with it.
flatpak uninstall --unused

and also

flatpak uninstall --delete-data

To any search engines indexing this

No Space Left on Device: Out of Inodes
Out of files issue linux
out of Innodes
Innodes out of linux

Hope this saves one soul

3

Thanks for the input. Hopefully it may help someone with a similar issue.

For me this was not the case, as can be seen from the df -i command output. I should maybe have gone into more details, but where I stated “it doesn’t seem to be inodes, drive space, or logs” I tried all of the potential solutions I could find Googling those three potential causes, including deleting lots of things. Rebooting worked temporarily, long enough to run a couple of commands, but sooner or later the dreaded message would be back. Once it appeared, I couldn’t even run console commands sometimes. Unfortunately I never managed to solve it. My son needed his laptop working so a format/reinstall was all that worked in my case.

My memory is a bit hazy on the details now, as it was a few months ago.

4

yeah i get that.

I remember running df -i
It does not help in this case. But i can promise this is the reason.

The bug is called by something else that df -i does not account for and it seems that there is some limit that causes it.
I promise you though. Once you delete some files.. any files.. you will start to see things start to work after a reboot.