Did intentionally install packages that can't fit so can check how the OpenWrt behave and what I'm capable to do with it (this is spare device so playing with it not mis-configuring my main router).
As to why is possible install packages that are above the quota available:
because fs used for adding data is JFFS2 and "is compressed, so a program (opkg in particular) cannot know in advance how much space a package will occupy"
Not sure if all devices have this as info for NAND pointing to UBIFS
Mine have: mount|grep 'jffs' -> /dev/mtdblock6 on /overlay type jffs2 (rw,noatime)
Now have some questions.
Starting on device with this space:
df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
overlayfs:/overlay 9.9M 448.0K 9.4M 4% /
Did install the set of packages:
opkg update
opkg install wireguard-tools ip-full kmod-veth iperf3 git-http
(Using this as example instead of just randomly running install whatever until fail because of no space and also the last one being really big fill the space, the remove process nicely verifiable as a lot of packages are just small and not create enough mess.)
It can't be done; this is the starting point of this adventure:
Collected errors:
* pkg_write_filelist: Failed to open //usr/lib/opkg/info/git-http.list: No space left on device.
* opkg_install_pkg: Failed to extract data files for git-http. Package debris may remain!
* opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package git-http.
* opkg_conf_write_status_files: Can't open status file //usr/lib/opkg/status: No space left on device.
Now what to do - from 4% to 98%.
root@OpenWrt:~# df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
overlayfs:/overlay 9.9M 9.7M 188.0K 98% /
According to documentation (this whole page of wiki) it should be possible to uninstall packages:
(All info here is just to make it shorter, did that for each package by name.)
opkg remove ip-full
No packages removed.
and
opkg --autoremove remove ip-full
No packages removed.
This is same for each package attempted for install.
Wondering why - run:
opkg list-installed | grep '*all attempted to install*'
And it return none.
That make me wonder.
In general, does this mean: that the if last package, (in this example because there is no space), fails - it take down entirety from the actual opkg install run(?).
Despite seeing opkg downloading quite a lot of .ipk and some configurations:
Configuring libatomic1.
Configuring libopenssl3.
Configuring libiperf3.
Configuring kmod-veth.
Configuring librt.
Configuring git.
Configuring iperf3.
because space taken, did assume it's all there except the 'git-http' as that fails.
Well unable to uninstall anything:
(seeing some attempts ending like this)
Collected errors:
* opkg_conf_write_status_files: Can't open status file //usr/lib/opkg/status: No space left on device.
decided continue with 'Out of space' option.
But that is not possible, unless one already can free up some space, because:
vi wq > -ash: can't create opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh: No space left on device
For more clarity, adding it from wiki:
opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh
Save the script
cat << "EOF" > opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh
#!/bin/sh
opkg update
URL="$(opkg --force-space --noaction install "${@}"
| sed -n -e "/^Downloading\s*/s///p")"
rm -f /usr/lib/opkg/lock
for URL in ${URL}
do FILE="$(wget -q -O - "${URL}"
| tar -O -x -z ./data.tar.gz
| tar -t -z
| sort -r
| sed -e "s|^.|/overlay/upper|")"
for FILE in ${FILE}
do if [ -f "${FILE}" ]
then rm -f "${FILE}"
elif [ -d "${FILE}" ]
then rmdir "${FILE}"
fi
done
done
EOF
chmod +x opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh
So had to perform 'reset to defaults', prepare the .sh before filling up the space again (or did that also by creating a bigger file in before filling up space and deleting it later avoiding the necessity of reset/reflash) and only in this scenario can proceed for:
./opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh git-http
And run it for all of them.
After all - always the best outcome is:
root@OpenWrt:~# df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
overlayfs:/overlay 9.9M 5.6M 4.3M 56% /
Can see output from ./opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh (shortened, many more lines, for each package few):
rmdir: '/overlay/upper/usr/lib/git-core/': Directory not empty
rmdir: '/overlay/upper/usr/lib/': Directory not empty
Would expect that it will remove them as well being instructed to do so for 'git-http'.
Do I make a mistake in the process? How one can remove files(?) so the difference 52% (measuring against clean start) is not existing anymore.
The packages can't be found with opkg list-installed - so where this remaining files, whatever it is, reside..
Well, from assuming from wiki about layout of flash its in /overlay/upper/usr.
But why it's not cleaned at all? (In my case cca 1/2.)
In /overlay/upper/usr/lib/opkg/info is quite a lot of files matching the attempted install of wireguard-tools ip-full kmod-veth iperf3 git-http
Did search forum, yes, mainly to achieve info pointing back to the wiki/reflash - but that seems to me only if some command can't be run.
(Reading wiki my initial expectations were, well I can solve this with ssh in.)
Try a lot (even had to reflash device 2 times) but no success.
Is this normal(?) or expected.
Unless user manually eradicate files (and this can be tedious work - fortunately some dirs printed out by ./opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh) if not having enough memory/mounted USB / it's almost automatically non-recoverable state (if the package is big so the residue files are taking much space in many dirs).
This all is not critique of a the project at all as mainly an honest observation/questioning the experience.
Listing of dirs after all ./opkg-rm-pkg-deps.sh runs:
ls -d -- */ | sed -e 's/[^\/]*$//' | sort | uniq | while read dir; do du -sh "$dir"; done
| sort -rn
895.0K www/
594.0K bin/
390.5K etc/
72.0K var/
72.0K tmp/
19.5K root/
14.4M usr/
14.0M rom/
8.0M overlay/ - in here are by name some files resembling
what were attempted to be processed by opkg
4.3M lib/
1.5M sbin/
0 sys/
0 proc/
0 mnt/
0 dev/
root@OpenWrt:/# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 3840 3840 0 100% /rom
tmpfs 28636 72 28564 0% /tmp
/dev/mtdblock6 10112 5688 4424 56% /overlay
overlayfs:/overlay 10112 5688 4424 56% /
tmpfs 512 0 512 0% /dev