Ubuntu: gunzip: No space left on device, while df shows otherwise

I am trying to decompress a .gz file with the gunzip command and I get the error 'No space left on device'.

This is the output of 'df -h':

Filesystem       Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root         25G  9.2G   15G  39% /
tmpfs             15G     0   15G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs            3.1G  872K  3.1G   1% /run
tmpfs            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
/dev/nvme0n1p15  105M  6.1M   99M   6% /boot/efi
tmpfs            1.6G  4.0K  1.6G   1% /run/user/1000

Also, I am running on aws ec2 if that's useful, I don't see how it can be.

I have tried googling this error but I have found no luck with the possible solutions, from deleted files being used to inodes, etc.

One possible problem is the size of the temp file, but I have added more space to '/dev/shm' the first 'tmpfs' filesystem and still did not work. I do not however, know which temp file gunzip uses and I am unable to figure it out.

Any thoughts?

gunzip usede value of$TMPDIRif set otherwise/tmp` to temporaty store what it is extracting.

To see if it holds a value do

echo $TMPDIR

Set that to something like /home/$USER/tmp/ and it will extract.

Mind that besides disk space there is another reason for this error: when running out of inodes it shows the same message. Command df -i shows free inodes.