abiosoft/colima · error

error writing temp file: %w

Error message

error writing temp file: %w

What it means

Immediately after creating the temp file, vmnetFile.Install writes the embedded tarball bytes with f.Write(gz); failure wraps as 'error writing temp file'. Nearly always storage exhaustion mid-write: disk full or quota exceeded between CreateTemp and Write, tmpfs size limits, or the file having been closed/removed externally. The deferred os.Remove cleans up the partial file.

Source

Thrown at daemon/process/vmnet/deps.go:64

func (v vmnetFile) Install(host environment.HostActions) error {
	arch := "x86_64"
	if runtime.GOARCH != "amd64" {
		arch = "arm64"
	}

	// read the embedded file
	gz, err := embedded.Read("network/vmnet_" + arch + ".tar.gz")
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error retrieving embedded vmnet file: %w", err)
	}

	// write tar to tmp directory
	f, err := os.CreateTemp("", "vmnet.tar.gz")
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error creating temp file: %w", err)
	}
	if _, err := f.Write(gz); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error writing temp file: %w", err)
	}
	_ = f.Close() // not a fatal error

	defer func() {
		_ = os.Remove(f.Name())
	}()

	// extract tar to desired location
	dir := optDir
	if err := host.RunInteractive("sudo", "mkdir", "-p", dir); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error preparing colima privileged dir: %w", err)
	}
	if err := host.RunInteractive("sudo", "sh", "-c", fmt.Sprintf("cd %s && tar xfz %s 2>/dev/null", dir, f.Name())); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("error extracting vmnet archive: %w", err)
	}

	return nil
}

View on GitHub (pinned to c3a5f9184d)

Solutions

1. check free space where TMPDIR lives: df -h $TMPDIR, then clean up
2. point TMPDIR at a larger writable filesystem and retry
3. retry the start once space is available — the partial temp file is auto-removed by the deferred cleanup

var stat syscall.Statfs_t
if err := syscall.Statfs(os.TempDir(), &stat); err == nil {
    free := stat.Bavail * uint64(stat.Bsize)
    if free < 50<<20 { // tarball is a few MB; require headroom
        return fmt.Errorf("less than 50MB free in %s — free space first", os.TempDir())
    }
}

if _, err := f.Write(gz); err != nil {
    _ = f.Close()
    _ = os.Remove(f.Name()) // partial file cleanup; ENOSPC: free space then retry install
    return fmt.Errorf("error writing temp file: %w", err)
}

When it happens

Trigger: disk fills between temp file creation and the multi-megabyte write; TMPDIR on a small tmpfs smaller than the vmnet tarball; file descriptors/quotas exhausted.

Common situations: machines nearly out of disk; CI containers with hard tmp size limits.

Related errors

• error creating temp file: %w
• error preparing colima privileged dir: %w
• failed to create bundle directory: %w
• cannot create file '%s': %w
• error persisting runtime settings: %w

AI-assisted analysis of abiosoft/colima@c3a5f9184d (2026-08-15). Data as JSON: /api/errors/8a0b84fd77378c88. Report an issue: GitHub.