Failed to install GHC 7.10: fatal error with tar command.

[wismill]

Hi, I cannot install GHC 7.10 on ArchLinux 64 bits running on a VPS. However, it works well for GHC 7.8.4.

I have the following output, the last line repeating for a lot of files:

stack setup      
Run from outside a project, using implicit global config
Using resolver: lts-3.2 from global config file: /home/user123/.stack/global/stack.yaml
Downloaded ghc-7.10.2.                                     
Unpacking GHC ...Running /usr/bin/tar xf /home/user123/.stack/programs/x86_64-linux/ghc-7.10.2.tar.xz exited with ExitFailure 2
/usr/bin/tar: ghc-7.10.2/libraries/base/dist-install/doc/html/base/base.haddock: Wrote only 9216 of 10240 bytes
/usr/bin/tar: ghc-7.10.2/libraries/base/dist-install/doc/html/base/mini_Text-Show-Functions.html: Cannot write: No space left on device
[...]

There is enough space on the device (see below). I can extract manually the tar.xz file downloaded by stack without problem using tar xf ~/.stack/programs/x86_64-linux/ghc-7.10.2.tar.xz.

df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
dev             970M     0  970M   0% /dev
run             979M  304K  979M   1% /run
/dev/vda1       9.9G  3.0G  6.5G  32% /
tmpfs           979M     0  979M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           979M     0  979M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           979M     0  979M   0% /tmp
tmpfs           196M     0  196M   0% /run/user/0
tmpfs           196M     0  196M   0% /run/user/1000

stack --version
Version 0.1.3.1, Git revision b3cc241f68576bb50dc472953ea73f4be8b11954

[borsboom]

@drwebb as our resident Arch user, is this something you might be able to help with?

[borsboom]

@wismill, have you tried installing GHC 7.10.2 manually to see if you have the same problem?

1. Download http://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.10.2/ghc-7.10.2-x86_64-unknown-linux-deb7.tar.xz
2. Extract it: tar xf ghc-7.10.2-x86_64-unknown-linux-deb7.tar.xz
3. Change to the extracted directory: cd ghc-7.10.2
4. Run ./configure --prefix=/opt/ghc/7.10.2 (change the path to suit your preference)
5. Run sudo make install

[drwebb]

I've just upgraded stack to master 7a03614f3a, and reinstall 7.10.2. In the past upgrading was smooth. I would guess you need about 1.0 GB of space for ghc-7.10.2.

So something strange is happening here, I've no real ideas. As a work around you can install 7.10.1 from the official Extra repo, and hope the version is bumped to 7.10.2 soon.

[wismill]

@borsboom I tried your method and it works.

[wismill]

Ok, got it:

mkdir ~/tmp
TMPDIR=~/tmp stack setup
rm -r ~/tmp

Explanation: extraction in Setup.hs uses withSystemTempDirectory that uses on Linux TMPDIR, or default to /tmp. I am in the latter case, and my /tmp has less than 1GiB (see df -h output in the first message). So setting another temporary directory does the trick. That was my first suspicion, but I misread the output of df. Still a lot of experience to get in Linux's world ;-)

Conclusion: I do not think stack itself should fix this case, but could stack first check if there is enough space before to install? A much better error message is definitely needed.

I would like to add an element of context: I want to use Yesod and contrary to PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. there is no turnkey provider. So one needs a server with root access and VPS is a very good solution. But often these "machines" will have limited resources and my issue could then show up often.

[borsboom]

I don't think it's worth checking for disk space beforehand, but including the location it's trying to extract the tarball in would help users determine where the problem is. This would be a good task for a newcomer who wants to get their hands in the code, so pull requests are most welcome.

[bixuanzju]

@wismill Do you think it can be closed?

[Decoherence]

mkdir ~/tmp
TMPDIR=~/tmp stack setup
rm -r ~/tmp

@wismill Thanks for the tip! This fixed the issue on a fresh Arch install.

[wismill]

@bixuanzju thanks for the commit but I am not fully convinced and there is also an ongoing discussion on issues #623 and #996.

[borsboom]

Closing in favour of #996