The volume boot has only 40mb disk space remaining

Question

When I install the software updates with "Update Manager", there is a pop up alert which tells me "The volume "boot" has only 0 byte disk space remaining

run sudo fdisk -l in a terminal, and output:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0c7a859b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          206848   280451071   140122112    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       280451072   618371071   168960000    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       618373118   976768064   179197473+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       763730163   976768064   106518951    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6       618373120   626370559     3998720   83  Linux
/dev/sda7       626372608   630370303     1998848   82  Linux swap / Solaris

63.59 GB space **free** after /dev/sda7

lsblk output:

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 465.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   100M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0 133.6G  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0 161.1G  0 part 
├─sda4   8:4    0     1K  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0 101.6G  0 part 
├─sda6   8:6    0   3.8G  0 part /
└─sda7   8:7    0   1.9G  0 part [SWAP]
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

Try to increase your / partition.post the output of lsblk. — Avinash Raj, Feb 28 '14 at 05:07
sorry I can't understand please guide me step by step or tell me which command or software I use? — Anees, Feb 28 '14 at 05:12
Run lsblk command on terminal and then post it's output on your question. — Avinash Raj, Feb 28 '14 at 05:13
How did you manage to get this installed? The minimum size for your system partition is 6 GB... the installer usually won't let you proceed if you don't have that much, and really it should be at least 10 GB. I think you just need to reinstall. — psusi, Mar 01 '14 at 05:15
@psusi The issue seems more likely to be that the Ubuntu installer provides such little space to the /boot partition ( at least on versions 12.X and older ) during a clean install. I operate a server that had 10TB of space, and while / is mounted on a partition that has a bulk of the space, /boot is mounted on a smaller partition the installer automatically created that is just 229M for my environment. — conrad10781, May 14 '14 at 12:09
@conrad10781 What makes you think there is a separate /boot partition? The fdisk output shows only one Linux filesystem partition - /dev/sda6 - and lsblk shows it is mounted on /. Though the error message does refer to volume boot, if it were /dev/sda1, then odd that it is NTFS and not listed with a mountpoint by lsblk. — bain, May 14 '14 at 12:22
Please post the output of the command df. What version of Ubuntu is this? Did you install that version or upgrade from an earlier version? Did you choose automated or manual partitioning? — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', May 14 '14 at 12:26
@bain I apologize if I'm misreading it, but the * is set to Boot on /dev/sda1 right, which is 100M? I can't speak for the rest, but on a typical install, I believe the "design" ( at least on 12.X and a few older ) was to create a separate partition for /boot, as that how all of our hardware from that time has it and we did not use any custom partitioning, and just let the installer configure everything. IE ( removed other partitions ):
Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/sda2 229M 73M 145M 34% /boot — conrad10781, May 15 '14 at 12:13
@conrad10781 /dev/sda1 is formatted as NTFS. It could be an EFI partition. But if it is an old (pre-EFI) system then the Ubuntu installer would not format /boot as NTFS. More information is needed.. — bain, May 15 '14 at 12:27

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Sorry, the following was intended to be a comment, but was too long.

@psusi The issue seems more likely to be that the Ubuntu installer provides such little space to the /boot partition ( at least on versions 12.X and older ) during a clean install. I operate a server that had 10TB of space, and while / is mounted on a partition that has a bulk of the space, /boot is mounted on a smaller partition the installer automatically created that is just 229M for my environment.

@Anees You can reduce the size of / and then increase the size of /boot , but given the risks and potential need to turn off the machine ( might not be that easy to do if it's a server ) , in all likelyhood, you'll probably find cleaning up some of the older versions of the kernel you have installed to do the trick with significantly less risk. IE in my environment, in which we do regular updates, I had files from July 27, 2012 for 3.2.0-29 and in upwards of a dozen for everything in between up to 3.2.0-61. For the space we have, we can easily keep 3 or 4 without a problem ( 2-3 newest, 1-2 oldest ). See How do I remove old kernel versions to clean up the boot menu? for a better breakdown/how-to.

The volume boot has only 40mb disk space remaining

1 Answers1