This has apparently gotten worse. After freeing up space on / on host phg33, each subsequent attempt to update glibc-locale results in a larger reported shortfall than previously. If I don't free up space, but merely retry, the requirement nevertheless increases every time. The installed size of the glibc-locale package only about 22% of the total current freespace on the / filesystem. # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 48KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 49KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 50KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 52KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 54KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 56KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 57KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 58KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 60KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 61KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 63KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 397KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.25-2.3.x86_64 needs 962KB on the / filesystem # installing package glibc-locale-2.22-1.1.x86_64 needs 2MB on the / filesystem I temporarily moved /boot/vmlinu* and /boot/initrd* off / and got glibc-locale to install, which changed the / filesystem freespace from 10% to 9% of total 5.6G.