I tried the advice given on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RemoveOldKernels, but it mostly doesn't work. For example, "apt-get autoremove --purge" removed zero kernels. To install "purge-old-kernels" would require installing like 60 dependencies of "bikeshed", which seems unreasonable.
I think part of the problem is that the tools behave differently depending on who installed a kernel, but /boot gets full based on the number of kernels, not who installed them. My machine (a netbook) is basically never left on long enough to run an unattended upgrade, so I run upgrades manually. That means basically every kernel was manually installed, so something that removes only automatically installed kernels is 0% useful. In the real world the problem is disk space, not assigning blame for who installed a given kernel! Any process that installs new kernels without deleting old kernels will eventually fill up a finite-sized /boot. Any solution that doesn't address the sad fact of the finiteness of /boot will leave some people, probably the most inexpert, stuck. I personally can manually grub around and remove kernels, so this is only annoying, not show-stopping, but I think we have lots of evidence that it is show-stopping for some people, which suggests that there are many more people out there who don't know how to complain who are also injured. Bottom line: /boot is finite, so anybody who installs a kernel without deleting a kernel is doing something that will sink somebody's ship. Given that lots of machines out there are clogged by the old maintenance processes, any solution that doesn't explicitly address how to un-clog a machine clogged by the previous solutions isn't really a solution. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to unattended-upgrades in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1357093 Title: Kernels not autoremoving, causing out of space error on LVM or Encrypted installation or on any installation, when /boot partition gets full Status in unattended-upgrades: New Status in unattended-upgrades package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Bug description: Currently if one chooses to use LVM or encrypted install, a /boot partition is created of 236Mb Once kernel updates start being released this partition soon fills until people are left unable to upgrade. While you and I might know that we need to watch partition space, many of the people we have installing think that a windows disk is a disk and not a partition, education is probably the key - but in the meantime support venues keep needing to deal with the fact the partition is too small and/or old kernels are not purged as new ones install. For workaround and sytem repair, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RemoveOldKernels To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unattended-upgrades/+bug/1357093/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
