CI runner disk full

April 30, 2026 · View on GitHub

Playbook ID: runner-disk-full Category: ci Severity: critical Tags: disk, storage, runner, ci, space

What this failure means

The CI runner has run out of available disk space. The build, test, or artifact step cannot write files and fails with ENOSPC.

Common log signals

No space left on device
disk quota exceeded
Write failed: No space left
not enough disk space
insufficient disk space
out of disk space
Disk is full
Error processing tar file

Diagnosis

The CI runner has run out of available disk space. The build, test, or artifact step cannot write files and fails with ENOSPC.

Fix steps

  1. Check remaining space before diagnosing: df -h and du -sh /* | sort -rh | head -20.
  2. Remove Docker build cache and dangling images: docker system prune -af --volumes.
  3. Clear dependency caches: rm -rf ~/.npm ~/.gradle/caches ~/.m2/repository ~/.cache/pip.
  4. In GitHub Actions, add the jlumbroso/free-disk-space action before large build steps.
  5. In GitLab CI, prune images in before_script and reduce artifact retention.
  6. In CircleCI, choose a larger resource_class or clean up large workspace directories.
  7. Upgrade to a runner or agent tier with more disk, or split the job across multiple stages.
  8. Reduce .dockerignore exclusions to keep the build context small.
  9. Add a cheap guard near the top of the job so storage problems fail fast with a clear message instead of surfacing mid-build.

Validation

  • Re-run the failing workflow step after confirming free space with df -h.
  • Confirm the original failure signature for CI runner disk full is gone.

Likely files to inspect

  • .dockerignore
  • Dockerfile
  • .github/workflows/*.yml
  • .github/workflows/*.yaml

Run Faultline

faultline analyze build.log
faultline explain runner-disk-full
faultline workflow build.log --json --mode agent

Search phrases this page answers

  • CI runner disk full
  • Ci: ci runner disk full
  • Write failed: No space left
  • GitHub Actions ci runner disk full
  • faultline explain runner-disk-full

Generated from playbooks/bundled/log/ci/runner-disk-full.yaml. Do not edit directly — run make docs-generate.