Nixpkgs: chromium build fails, No space left on device

[davidak]

Describe the bug
The build of chromium fails with the error

No space left on device

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. nix-build 'https://github.com/worldofpeace/nixpkgs/archive/pantheon-stuff-20.09.tar.gz' -A chromium

Expected behavior
Nix builds packages with the resources available

Screenshots

The strange thing is that /tmp and the RAM don't seem full!
So it's not the same issue as https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/54707

Additional context
Maybe Chromium is a special case? How many resources does it need?

Notify maintainers
@primeos

Metadata

• system: "x86_64-linux"
• host os: Linux 5.8.13, NixOS, 20.09beta992.7badbf18c45 (Nightingale)
• multi-user?: yes
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.3.7
• channels(root): "home-manager-20.09, nixos-20.09beta992.7badbf18c45, nixos-hardware, nixos-unstable-21.03pre246062.420f89ceb26"
• nixpkgs: /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos

Maintainer information:

# a list of nixpkgs attributes affected by the problem
attribute: chromium
# a list of nixos modules affected by the problem
module:

[ajs124]

Maybe you're out of inodes instead of space? Don't know how tmpfs manages those, but you can check with df -i.

[primeos]

The strange thing is that /tmp and the RAM don't seem full!

Did you try building with -K/--keep-failed?:

Specifies that in case of a build failure, the temporary directory (usually in /tmp) in which the build takes place should not be deleted. The path of the build directory is printed as an informational message.

That could help with your investigation (e.g. for the inode case) though it's not ideal (especially with /tmp on tmpfs) as it won't help with determining the RAM usage just before the build failed.

Maybe Chromium is a special case? How many resources does it need?

IIRC building Chromium takes around 10-12 GB of storage on the build directory (or even a bit more?). RAM usage is pretty low with few cores but I'm not sure how it scales with more cores.

[davidak]

Maybe you're out of inodes instead of space?

yes, that is the issue here

even unpacking the source requires more than 409600 inodes

[FRidh]

@andir just mentioned on irc it seems to be related to the recent systemd change.

with the recent systemd upgrade we have a inode limit on /tmp which I hit when building 2+ firefox instances at the same time..

I encountered the issue doing a nixos-rebuild switch.