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My boot partition is full and I can't install new kernel versions. So I tried to remove some old versions like this:

  1. get active kernel

    uname -a

    Linux Ubuntu-1404-trusty-64-minimal 3.13.0-43-generic #72-Ubuntu SMP Mon Dec 8 19:35:06 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

  2. get installed kernels

    dpkg -l linux-image-* | grep ^ii

    output: http://pastebin.com/X9P81W22

  3. now i try to remove linux-image-3.13.0-24-generic

    aptitude purge linux-image-3.13.0-24-generic

    output: http://pastebin.com/J4Zmhf9Y

I'm not shure because aptitude will delete linux-generic{a} and linux-image-generic{a} as well. Over 420MB will be freed. But my boot partition looks like this:

/dev/md1 488M 484M 0 100% /boot

is this normal??

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  • Each kernel version comes as a set of packages. If you want to remove 3.13.0-24, remove all packages related to it (try dpkg -l|grep 3.13.0-24 and look at all those starting with linux-, not just linux-image-)
    – Dan
    Commented Jul 8, 2015 at 11:53
  • Yes, I know and aptitude will delete dependencies as well (look at output #3). my problem is: aptitude will delete linux-generic{a} and linux-image-generic{a} and I don't know why because, in my opinion, this is necessary for the current kernel, or not?
    – Kevin Horst
    Commented Jul 8, 2015 at 13:40
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    Aptitude tells you that those generic packages are not completely configured (since last update failed due to lack of space). Trying to remove only a part of an old kernel just confuses things further.
    – Dan
    Commented Jul 8, 2015 at 14:25

2 Answers 2

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1

That seems normal to me. For each kernel package, most of the kernel code (modules such as drivers) is stored in /lib/modules/ (with some in /lib/firmware/).

On the other hand, the images in /boot require less than 10MB of disk space between them. The following lists the kernel image files for version 3.2.0-87 with sizes in kB.

4892    /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-87-generic
2836    /boot/System.map-3.2.0-87-generic
784     /boot/abi-3.2.0-87-generic
144     /boot/config-3.2.0-87-generic

Automatic removal of older / unused kernel packages

The following command is useful for automatically removing some (but not all) older / unused kernel packages:

sudo apt-get autoremove

Edit: I noticed that you are currently using the 3.13.0-43-generic kernel. It would be best to reboot the system to use the latest installed kernel, 3.13.0-55-generic. The above command would be most effective if you are already using the most recently installed kernel.

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  • First, apt-get autoremove didn't work for me because I had a broken update of the newest kernel (because of less disk space). So I tried to move some 20MB kernel images to backup folder and tried aptitude safe-upgrade again. After that I run apt-get autoremove sucessfully - thx.
    – Kevin Horst
    Commented Jul 8, 2015 at 13:55
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Askubuntu has questions (and answers) for that

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