This article provides solution when the Juniper switch QFX5120-48T shows error "Error: not enough space to unpack /hostvar/tmp/image-23.2R2.tgz ERROR: Either use 'force' or consider deleting snapshots using 'request system snapshot delete ' {master:0} root@switch>".

Receiving the error message below. Already tried clearing out space. The location of the software image has over 30GB of available free space.

root@switch> request system software add /hostvar/tmp/image-23.2R2.tgz jinstall-host-qfx-5e-x86-64-23.2R2.21-secure.tgz: gzip decompression failed tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors. Error: not enough space to unpack /hostvar/tmp/image-23.2R2.tgz ERROR: Either use 'force' or consider deleting snapshots using 'request system snapshot delete ' {master:0} root@switch>

Please note that you are using the incorrect directory to accommodate the installation package, you should use “/var/tmp/” instead of “/hostvar/tmp/”. Then try again.

It would be best practice to also confirm that the checksum matches that of the Juniper Downloads website. You may want to run the command “root@switch> file checksum md5 /var/tmp/jinstall-host-qfx-5e-x86-64-23.2R2.21-secure.tgz”.

After all this, the software upgrade should go through normally.