[Bug 1357093] Re: Kernels not autoremoving, causing out of space error on LVM or Encrypted installation or on any installation, when /boot partition gets full

[David Potter]

I'm running Ubuntu 17.04 and whilst I have had the problem for so long I
can't be sure, I think I have had this problem since 15.04. I keep my
software completely up to date and all updates have been applied to
date.  I can honestly say that this issue is by no means fixed. The
reference to unattended-upgrades is a red herring.  I boils down to a
faulty kenal cleanup routine and a poor default for the boot partition
at install time.

I have over the many months of experiencing the problem, finally come up
with the following work around set of commands that free up the space
required to keep me going with a few more updates...

sudo apt-get autoremove;sudo apt-get autoclean;sudo apt-get clean

dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed
"s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^
]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Although this sorts the problem out when I get the "not enough space"
issue it doesn't mean that the underlying problem shouldn't be sorted
out.

It takes time and effort that shouldn't be required.
It has taken many months to come up with a decent work-around.
I can't use this type of install for family and friends as they are not savvy enough to use the work-around and shouldn't need to be using sudo in the first place.

I see this issue is marked as wishlist.  This is a travesty.  It is a
bug pure and simple.

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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

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