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I'm running 14.04. I ran sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade, which failed with an error:

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/
    linux-image-3.19.0-66-generic_3.19.0-66.74~14.04.1_amd64.deb (--unpack): 
    cannot copy extracted data for './boot/System.map-3.19.0-66-generic' 
    to /boot/System.map-3.19.0-66-generic.dpkg-new': 
    failed to write (No space left on device)

Now, my machine won't boot. I can get to the login screen, but when I enter my password, I immediately get logged out after seeing a glitchy screen like this (sorry for the glare):

img Trying to boot in recovery mode gives me this output:

img (mountall: fsck /boot [957] terminated with status 1)

It looks like there's a problem with /boot, but I can't figure out how to repair it.

I've also had trouble booting from more recent kernels, so I've been booting from 3.19.0-49.

Byte Commander
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Joe Mornin
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    Please log in to a TTY (press CTRL+ALT+F1 on the login screen and enter username and password) and then check your /var/log/apt/term.log which contains a copy of the full terminal output of your last apt commands. Find your last session and please copy the error and add it to your question. Let's see if that's related. – Byte Commander Sep 23 '16 at 18:21
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    Seems like /boot ran out of space. Try http://askubuntu.com/questions/89710/how-do-i-free-up-more-space-in-boot and reinstall that kernel update afterwards. – Byte Commander Sep 23 '16 at 18:36
  • OK, thanks. I'm in the shell in recovery mode, but $ ls /boot lists nothing... any ideas? – Joe Mornin Sep 23 '16 at 18:46
  • I figured it out--see my answer. Thank you for the help. – Joe Mornin Sep 23 '16 at 19:57

1 Answers1

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With the help of Byte Commander's comments, I was able to fix this using these steps:

  • Open a root shell in recovery mode
  • Make the filesystem writable: mount -o remount,rw /
  • Mount the boot partition: mount /dev/sda1 /boot
  • Configure a network connection: dhclient eth0
  • Remove unused kernels; this took some improvising, but it was mainly a combination of apt-get purge linux-image-x.x.x-x, dpkg --force-all -P linux-image-x.x.x-x-xxxxxx, and apt-get install -f.

tl;dr: don't let your boot partition get full.

Joe Mornin
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