I think a lot of these problems are because of the tiny ram-based /tmp directory; you simply run out of room. See pages 3 and 4 of this thread:I've had probs decompressing pet's, no room left to decompress..
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 6&start=45
The solution Mark figured out was to quit X, create a /tmp directory somewhere on the hard drive (in my case, because I wanted to retain security, in my encrypted pup_save in /root/tmp) and mount it to the existing ram-based /tmp.
The only question I have on that is whether the ram based one is used up first before resorting to the added (slower) disk-based one. That would be ideal...
Of course this needs to be handled in the boot script for a permanent solution.