There's typically two scenarios presented when there's not enough space on these platforms:
1) Some virtual-chassis cases will still exhibit a high utilization despite following KB31198 [juniper.net].
2) Some virtual-chassis will show low utilization and will still fail to upgrade. For this scenario there’s a workaround I will document below.
When we upgrade a VC, we typically execute it from the Master member and we let it push the bundle onto every other member automatically. This will have Junos create a temporary file named "mchassis-install.tgz" into /var/tmp on every single member of the VC:
{master:0}
root@switch> file list /var/tmp detail | match mchassis
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 357708572 Nov 10 2021 mchassis-install.tgz
This automatically takes away valuable free space from /dev/gpt which is causing a lot of upgrades to fail, so this procedure is not recommended for VC upgrade.
Let's imagine we have a 2 member VC. The Master being FPC0 and the Backup being FPC1.
1) Make a copy of the Junos image on every member you are going to locate it on /tmp folder. Do not use /var/tmp, the reason because it contributes to /dev/gpt/ partition.
Here an example on how to copy the image from Master FPC0 to FPC1:
root@switch> file copy /tmp/junos-arm-32-20.2R3-S3.6.tgz fpc1:/tmp/
2) Now this is key, we will push the bundle one member at a time, using the local image of each member that we just copied in the previous step. Doing this will bypass the storage error.
root@switch> request system software add /tmp/junos-arm-32-20.2R3-S3.6.tgz force no-validate member 0
<snippet> ...
NOTICE: 'pending' set will be activated at next reboot...
root@switch> request session member 1
...
{backup:1}
root@d19-39> request system software add /tmp/junos-arm-32-20.2R3-S3.6.tgz force no-validate member 1
3) At this point we have pushed the bundle individually and both members are ready for upgrading. Now you can return to the Master and reboot all members together:
root@switch> request session member 0
root@d19-39> request system reboot at now all-members
Reboot the system at now? [yes,no] (no) yes
.....
....
..
.