QEMU says out of disk space

[Steve Lewis]

I am trying to do development on an image in QEMU rinning under windows 
or linux.
I am also mounting the image with sshfs or sftpdrive on linux and 
windows respectively.
I am getting two issues -
sometimes the image insists there is no disk space left - this ofter 
prevents Xwindows from starting at boot.
The image is rendered unusable and even if not you can get nothing done. 
I do not think it is really out of space
but do not know how to check
Any thoughts or bright ideas.

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