when I installed debian 12.7 I created a separated /var directory, along other 2 separated directories (names forgotten).
I also use flatpak and this program is installed in this directory. Executing ‘flatpack update’ I discovered this directory is 95% full, meaning I cannot update anything, because /var is 95% full (only 400 MiB free)
Ideas to solve this?
you could move the flatpak stuff onto another partition with same permissions and bind mount it to the original location, then persist it with a line in fstab
Sounds like you created a seperate partition for /var. Only way to change that is to redo your partitions or bind mount an external disk as /var.
The safest method, if your /home has enough space, is to use it instead of /var for (some) Flatpak installs. You can force any Flatpak install to go to /home by adding --user to the command.
If you look at the output of flatpak list it will tell you which package is installed in user home dir and which in system (/var). You can also show the size of each package with flatpak list --columns=name,application,version,size,installation.
I don’t think you can move installed apps directly between system/user like Steam can (Flatpak is REALLY overdue for a good package manager) but you can uninstall apps from system, then run flatpak remove --unused, then install them again with --user.
Please note that apps installed with --user are only seen by the user that installed them. Also you’ll have to cleanup separately for system and user(s) in the future (flatpak remove --unused for system, then flatpak remove --unused --user for each user).
First you have to make a new --user remote. Then you can list your current stuff and install it on the --user side one package at a time, (with --no-pull so it sucks the existing install). Then, you delete the --system copy of packages.
If you end up with resizing /var as the only solution, please post your partition layout first and ask, don’t rush into it. A screenshot from an app like Disk Manager or Gparted should do it, and we’ll explain the steps and the risks.
When you’re ready to resize, you MUST use a bootable stick, not resize from inside the running system. You have to make a stick using something like Ventoy, and drop the ISO for the live version of GParted on the stick, then boot with it and pick the Gparted live. You’ll have to write down the instructions and be careful what you do, and also hope that there’s no power outage during.
In the future, you should look into using LVMs for your partitions.
I ran into a similar problem recently where my /var needed to be increased - I was able to run a simple lvextend -L+4G /dev/myvg/var --resizefs to grow my /var by 4 gigabytes.
Before I was using LVMs though I used a gparted live disk a lot
