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My Ubuntu instance will do security updates until boot partition is full and from then on kernel updates will fail.

When boot is full it is also not possible to remove older kernels because there are unmet dependencies. Apt will not allow those unmet dependencies to exist. As shown below, I cannot purge 138 because of unmet dependencies but I also cannot install 138 because the disk is full.

I suppose at this point I have edit dependencies manually. Bypassing Apt. How can I fix this issue? Without completely reinstalling Ubuntu?

[user@mysystem:~] $ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-extra-4.4.0-138-generic linux-image-4.4.0-138-generic 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'linux-image-4.4.0-138-generic' is not installed, so not removed
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 linux-image-generic : Depends: linux-image-4.4.0-138-generic but it is not going to be installed
                       Depends: linux-image-extra-4.4.0-138-generic but it is not going to be installed
                       Recommends: thermald but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

I tried the suggestion in Can't clean a full /boot because of unmet dependencies. I used commands like

sudo dpkg --force-all -P linux-image-3.13.0-32-generic

This does free up space. But if I run 

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge -f

Those kernels will be downloaded and installed again. Untill boot is again full. So autoremove and purge in the last command is a bit misleading to say the least.

At this point I think the only way to really fix this is to increase boot partition. It seems small with only given the way that Ubuntu updates kernels. It should be a lot larger default size with ample warnings.

onknows
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  • https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RemoveOldKernels – guiverc Feb 19 '19 at 04:56
  • I don't think that wil work. Apt is determined to first install and then purge. Not the other way around. IMHO it would be better to purge first and install after but that is not how Apt does it. – onknows Feb 19 '19 at 06:31
  • They key was maintenance (keep boot clean so it doesn't occur), but if you look further it also covered removing old kernels including when you have broken deps due to space issues. – guiverc Feb 19 '19 at 06:39
  • Which kernel version are you running (uname -r)? Which kernel versions are kept in /boot and which are going to be installed by APT? What’s your /boot partition size? – Melebius Feb 19 '19 at 08:17

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