Ubuntu /boot/ filling up, old kernels issue help

[bledd]

Hi,


I have a Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS install (which has been upgraded from around 12.04. /boot/ keeps filling up and shows old kernels

dpkg -l | grep linux-image

Shows..



How do I go about fixing this? I assume I need to take out the grub entries, then remove the files.

Cheers

 

[Steveocee]

apt autoremove ? Always did the trick for me in previous versions, no grub editing needed.

 

[SMN]

apt autoremove ? Always did the trick for me in previous versions, no grub editing needed.

I've found ubuntu generally does a rubbish job at cleaning up /boot, i regularly have to manually remove old kernels from /boot before running 'apt-get -f install' or the 'dpkg reconfigure' command (i forget the syntax).

OP, if 'apt autoremove' fails, you can do an ls in /boot and find the old kernels and delete them all except the one your on now (uname -r) and potentially another, just for safety. Then run 'apt-get update' and follow the trail

 

[Bagnaj97]

This just prompted me to tidy up a couple of machines, here's what I came up with:

dpkg -l | grep 'ii  linux-image\|ii  linux-headers\|ii  linux-modules\|ii  linux-tools' | cut -d ' ' -f3 | grep -v `uname -r | cut -d '-' -f1-2` | grep '[0-9]' > oldKernels && sudo apt remove `cat oldKernels`

List available packages (dpkg -l)
Filter down to the target packages, that are also installed (grep 'ii linux-image\|ii linux-headers\|ii linux-modules\|ii linux-tools')
Chop the line up and just get the package name (cut -d ' ' -f3)
Filter out the packages for the currently running kernel (grep -v `uname -r | cut -d '-' -f1-2`)
Filter down to packages containing numbers to exclude linux-image-generic etc (grep '[0-9]')

Finally redirect the list of packages to a file and uninstall them.
This worked for me, but check the list of packages carefully before pressing y!

 

[memyselfandi]

apt autoremove works just fine for me on both Ubuntu 16.x and 18.x

Or on CentOS something like package-cleanup assuming your max number of installed kernels is set higher than you actually want (fix that as well)

 

[uvarvu]

I run dpkg --purge to make sure anything residual is removed.

 

[bledd]

Was going around in circles.

Ended up just doing this.

I found that it is far easier to abandon the small partition and move /boot to the root. This also prevents any out of space issues in the future.

First move your data from the boot partition to root (run as sudo -s):

cp -a /boot /boot2
umount /boot
rmdir /boot
mv /boot2 /boot

Remove (or comment) the /boot entry in /etc/fstab:

vim /etc/fstab

Update grub and make sure everything is correct:

update-grub

apt should now be able to upgrade without problems.

This leaves an unused 200mb partition (which you could use for something else if you find it worth the trouble).