Deleting uneccessary kernels

Question

I installed synaptic package manager to manage my packages and, I see many kernels, that are not being used, can I delete them? There are 2 - 3 using kernels and many non using.

What do you mean by "cores" ? CPU cores, or something else ? Please [edit] your question and clarify what exactly you mean, and what the problem is. — Jonas Czech, Jul 05 '16 at 21:16
Kernels, you mean - I'd recommend leaving them, and they only take up a few MBs of space anyway, and don't use any other resources. Removing the wrong one may render your computer unbootable ! — Jonas Czech, Jul 05 '16 at 21:33

Alcuin Arundel · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-05T23:04:45.627

4

Purge old kernels: http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/06/purge-old-kernels.html

If you're using Xenial, it's included in the Byobu package, so you can run it straightaway if you have that installed: sudo purge-old-kernels

If you're using an earlier version of Ubuntu, then you can download the script from here: https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~kirkland/byobu/trunk/download/head:/purgeoldkernels-20160229030309-vgiaonyu553ugyrz-1/purge-old-kernels

Just make it executable and run it:

chmod +x purge-old-kernels
sudo ./purge-old-kernels

edited Jul 05 '16 at 23:04

answered Jul 05 '16 at 22:00

Alcuin Arundel

3,110

2

In Xenial the script is installed via the byobu package, which is only installed by default on the server. – Gunnar Hjalmarsson Jul 05 '16 at 23:00
1

@GunnarHjalmarsson Edited accordingly, thanks for the correction. – Alcuin Arundel Jul 05 '16 at 23:05

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 05 '16 at 22:04

Don't delete packages at random!! You will end up breaking system functionality. To delete unnecessary packages, open a Terminal window and type:

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get autoremove

This will delete very old kernels too. Ubuntu (and other linuxes) are keeping 2 or more kernel versions installed at all times as backup. If one kernel fails for any number of reasons, the next one will automatically boot instead. This ensures a 100% fail-proof operation. Not like stupid Windows with just one kernel and multiple blue screens.

Deleting uneccessary kernels

2 Answers2