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The upgrade from Debian 12 with KDE to Debian 13 didn't complete successfully. It seems to be due to disk space problems that the upgrade process still doesn't make sure to avoid or manage.

However, now I should have enough disk space on the partitions after running sudo apt-get autoremove and also rebooting (the shutdown button didn't work and neither did sudo shutdown so I long pressed the power button on the machine). It could be that there is too little disk space on /boot but as you can see the upgrade output claims there is enough disk space available now.

I checked what's in /boot with ls -l /boot and it's not much and I don't know how to free up its disk space, especially as I'd like to avoid having to manually removing kernel files. There don't seem to be kernel files I could remove so maybe the disk space issue is on another partition or it's not a disk space problem to begin with. Earlier, I had the upgrade process of sudo apt-get full-upgrade break in between because of too little disk space after which I ran sudo apt-get autoremove to manually free up disk space to then finish it for the most part (except for those 3 packages).

I think the Debian upgrade is still not beginner-friendly and doesn't manage the common issue of limited disk space.

Now when it comes to fixing this problem in my case and for people who have the same or a very similar problem: when I run sudo apt --fix-broken install to fix it, this is the output:

Summary: Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 0, Not Upgrading: 0 3 not fully installed or removed. Space needed: 0 B / 1,234 MB available Setting up initramfs-tools (0.148.3) ... update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Setting up plymouth (24.004.60-5) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.12.48+deb13-amd64 zstd: error 70 : Write error : cannot write block : No space left on device E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -9 -T0 70 update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-6.12.48+deb13-amd64 with 1. dpkg: error processing package plymouth (--configure): installed plymouth package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of plymouth-label: plymouth-label depends on plymouth (= 24.004.60-5); however: Package plymouth is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing package plymouth-label (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.148.3) ... ] update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.12.48+deb13-amd64 ] zstd: error 70 : Write error : cannot write block : No space left on device ] E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -9 -T0 70███████▎ ] update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-6.12.48+deb13-amd64 with 1. ] dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure): ] installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 ] Errors were encountered while processing: plymouth plymouth-label initramfs-tools

How to complete the Debian upgrade?

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2 Answers 2

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It's not the file system onto which your packages are installed, but your /boot filesystem that's full – check df -h to see what is actually at its limits!

You will need to uninstall outdated kernel packages that you're not using anymore.

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I consider this problem unsolved because all of this should really be handled by the upgrade process which should not break in between due to disk space issues and should explain why it could not install things (it even said Space needed: 0 B when it did need space). If removing kernels is needed, then it should prompt the user to do so as part of the upgrade like Ǹot enough disk space on /boot: remove old kernels? [y/n] _. Everything else means the upgrade is not doable and accessible to average users, meaning Debian is only for a small fraction of people with considerable IT skills. Nevertheless, until then a preinstalled tool that can be used like so in the command-line would be handy and also improve things a lot: remove-old-kernels.

Thanks to the answer to this question, which newcomers may find if they encounter the same problem, by Marcus Müller which I upvoted too, it's now clear that this is due to old removable kernel files taking up disk space in /boot. It remained unclear, especially for newcomers how this is done, so here are the specific steps.

How to solve this on Debian 13

  1. Reboot if you haven't yet to run the latest kernel
  2. In the console enter dpkg --list | egrep -i --color 'linux-image|linux-headers' | grep ii to see all the kernel files on /boot (if you use another command removing the files with rc instead of ii doesn't free up disk space)
  3. Enter uname -a to see which kernel file you have installed
  4. Remove kernel files like so sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-image-6.1.0-41-amd64 (replace the text after image- with the version numbers that are NOT the version that you have installed and that the uname command showed). You can use the tab ↹ key on your keyboard to let it autocomplete or show you the options after entering for example sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-image-.
  5. Also remove the kernel header files of other versions but do NOT remove the linux-headers-amd64 package (optional)
  6. Run sudo apt-get --purge autoremove (optional)
  7. In my case, plymouth and initramfs-tools were set up successfully with the first remove command of 4. but if not or just to check if everything is fine, run sudo apt --fix-broken install
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