dist-upgrade

[Patrick Asselman]

What you see are all the older kernels and their helper files that were 
once installed on the system.
These are not automatically removed after an upgrade, because something 
might go wrong and you may want to revert to an older kernel.

You can safely remove all older kernels if the one you are using now is 
known to be good.
But you should do this *before* attempting the upgrade to 14.04, not 
during ;-)

See for example
http://askubuntu.com/questions/2793/how-do-i-remove-or-hide-old-kernel-versions-to-clean-up-the-boot-menu

That scary " sudo apt-get remove --purge ..." command basically just 
checks which kernel you are using now, and then removes all other 
versions. You can also do that manually if you feel more confident that 
way.
dpkg -l 'linux-*'       shows all the installed kernels
uname -r                shows the kernel you are currently using
sudo apt-get remove --purge linux-....            will remove a certain 
kernel. Repeat this for all old kernels that you do not want to keep.

Best regards,
Patrick Asselman

On 2014-10-09 14:27, william drescher wrote:
> I am doing an in-place upgrade from 12.04 to 14.04 and all is going
> well, except...
> I have a bunch of files in /boot, some abi-..., some config-..., some
> initred.img-..., some System.map-... some vmlinuz-..., and some
> others.
> The upgrader is doing something to those files and it is taking
> roughly forever.  I thought it was a loop until I noticed that the
> kernel numbers were changing.
>
> here is what it keeps repeating:
> Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done
>
> Removing linux-image-3.2.0-32-generic (3.2.0-32.51) ...
> Examining /etc/kernel/prerm.d.
> run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/prerm.d/last-good-boot
> 3.2.0-32-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic
> Examining /etc/kernel/postrm.d .
> run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs-tools
> 3.2.0-32-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic
> update-initramfs: Deleting /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-32-generic
> run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/zz-update-grub
> 3.2.0-32-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-32-generic
> Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
> Searching for default file ... found: /boot/grub/default
> Testing for an existing GRUB menu.lst file ... found: 
> /boot/grub/menu.lst
> Searching for splash image ... none found, skipping ...
>
> I presume that it is processing all the kernels it is finding.
> I have 3 more machines to upgrade.  Can I safely remove most of the
> files in /boot?
>
> Now, of course, if I am missing the boat, I would appreciate any
> suggestions you might have.
>
> file ranges:
> abi-3.2.0-51-generic (and generic-pae)
> through abi-3.2.0.69-generic (and generic-pae)
>
> config-2.6.28.18-server through
> config-3.2.0.69-generic (and generic-pae)
>
> initrd.img-2.6.28-server through
> initrd.img-3.2.0-69-generic ( and generic-pae)
>
> 3 memtests
>
> System.map-2.6.28-18-server through
>  System.map-3.2.0-69-generic (and generic-pae)
>
> 3 vmcoreinfo files
>
>  vmlinuz-2.6.28-18-server through
>  vmlinuz-3.2.0-69-generic (and generic-pae)
>
>
> Yeah, I know a fresh install would have been better, but the lure of
> quick and simple...
>
> -bill