Cisco ASA: “Not enough space on device” error fixed

Several hours ago I took the ASA device in my lab to the routine software upgrade. I started with the fresh ASDM image upload, but it failed with the error message “Not enough space on device”. The reason sounds obvious, but it is not so trivial – how can you clean up some space on the physical appliance?

It appears that ASA does not clean up old software packages after their installation via ASDM. After several upgrades the flash memory of the device will be full of unused files, with no room to upload new ones. This is the time for manual cleanup.

The default location for uploaded files is the internal flash memory (aka “disk0”). Here is the way to can check its content:

poc-asa# show disk0
--#--  --length--  -----date/time------  path
  152  1868412     Jan 29 2008 13:37:34  securedesktop-asa-3.1.1.29-k9.pkg
  153  398305      Jan 29 2008 13:37:48  sslclient-win-1.1.0.154.pkg
  179  18097844    Jul 11 2013 11:39:05  asdm-713.bin
  164  4807912     Sep 14 2011 12:07:36  anyconnect-win-2.5.3054-k9.pkg
  165  2009        Sep 14 2011 12:09:12  default.xml
  166  4096        Jan 23 2012 10:50:04  syslog
  168  18368       Jan 23 2012 10:51:18  oldconfig_2012Jan23_0859.cfg
  172  20280       Mar 20 2013 13:03:30  oldconfig_2013Mar20_1201.cfg

[ ...rest of the listing skipped... ]

127111168 bytes total (101167104 bytes free)
poc-asa#

In the second column of the listing you can check which package is the best candidate for deletion.

poc-asa# delete disk0:/asdm-713.bin

Delete filename [asdm-713.bin]?

Delete disk0:/asdm-713.bin? [confirm]

poc-asa#

Be extra careful – deleting ASDM image that is currently in use will leave you without ASDM access!

Note that you can run those commands also via CLI access within ASDM (“Tools” => “Command Line Interface…”). The “/noconfirm” switch of ‘delete’ command with eliminate the need for interactive confirmation:

delete /noconfirm disk0:/asdm-713.bin

However, for those using ASDM there is a much more convenient option to perform file system manipulations via “File Transfer…” dialog under “Tools” menu.

You can get more information about the commands above in the Command Reference (“show disk”, “delete”).