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I am new to Linux. I am getting warning message every time saying my boot partition is having low memory. Following are the contents of my /boot. 

ls /boot/
abi-4.10.0-28-generic         initrd.img-4.13.0-37-generic
abi-4.10.0-40-generic         lost+found
abi-4.10.0-42-generic         memtest86+.bin
abi-4.13.0-26-generic         memtest86+.elf
abi-4.13.0-32-generic         memtest86+_multiboot.bin
abi-4.13.0-36-generic         retpoline-4.13.0-36-generic
abi-4.13.0-37-generic         retpoline-4.13.0-37-generic
config-4.10.0-28-generic      System.map-4.10.0-28-generic
config-4.10.0-40-generic      System.map-4.10.0-40-generic
config-4.10.0-42-generic      System.map-4.10.0-42-generic
config-4.13.0-26-generic      System.map-4.13.0-26-generic
config-4.13.0-32-generic      System.map-4.13.0-32-generic
config-4.13.0-36-generic      System.map-4.13.0-36-generic
config-4.13.0-37-generic      System.map-4.13.0-37-generic
efi                           vmlinuz-4.10.0-28-generic
grub                          vmlinuz-4.10.0-40-generic
initrd.img-4.10.0-28-generic  vmlinuz-4.10.0-42-generic
initrd.img-4.10.0-40-generic  vmlinuz-4.13.0-26-generic
initrd.img-4.10.0-42-generic  vmlinuz-4.13.0-32-generic
initrd.img-4.13.0-26-generic  vmlinuz-4.13.0-36-generic
initrd.img-4.13.0-32-generic  vmlinuz-4.13.0-37-generic
initrd.img-4.13.0-36-generic

Please advise how can I clean my /boot partition as I have no idea what these files do.

OS: Ubuntu 16.04

Zanna
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VSK
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    What is the actual message? Removing old kernels might help as per - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RemoveOldKernels – DaveStSomeWhere Mar 22 '18 at 04:08
  • The message is boot partition is almost full only 22 MB is left – VSK Apr 19 '18 at 18:03
  • I followed the link and did manual removal of kernel but getting the following error dpkg: error processing package linux-image-4.10.0-42-generic (--purge): dependency problems - not removing Errors were encountered while processing: linux-image-4.10.0-42-generic – VSK Apr 19 '18 at 18:13
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Could you please add a little more detail? What exactly did you do, what did you expect to happen and what happened instead? Did you encounter any warning or error messages? Please reproduce them in their entirety in your question. You can select, copy and paste terminal content and most dialogue messages in Ubuntu. Please [edit] your post to add information instead of posting a comment. (see How do I ask a good question?) – David Foerster Aug 17 '18 at 10:15

1 Answers1

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At the command line run:

df -h | grep boot

This will show you how much space is free on your /boot partition. In my case it looks pretty bad.

/dev/sdb1                    472M  460M     0 100% /boot

As already mentioned, you can clean up old kernels and packages to help free up some space.

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

The operation can take quite a while as it looks for old kernels and other packages which can be removed.

Then run df -h | grep boot again to check your space on /boot

/dev/sdb1                    472M  143M  306M  32% /boot

Much better!

James Bradbury
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