How do I safely remove old kernels?

Amerist · 10-31-2002, 06:18 AM

I have a bunch of older kernels on my system now and I'm using the latest according to redhat 8's up2date applet. My question is how do I get rid of these older kernels? I know how to remove the entries in GRUB, but I'm interested in freeing up some disk space. Will I be saving a lot of space if I delete an older kernel?

Azrael · 10-31-2002, 06:29 AM

If you installed the kernels from source just delete the image in /boot, the ramdisk image (if any) and the according System.map (if any), then delete the modules /lib/modules-kernelversion and the kernel source in /usr/src/linux-kernelversion

But make sure you don't delete things of your actual kernel

Aussie · 10-31-2002, 06:32 AM

If you've removed the entries from your grub conf then you can safely delete the kernel images, you won't save a huge amount of space though, kernel images are usually small enough to fit on a floppy, where you can free up some space is by deleting the kernel modules that belong to the old kernels, have a look in /lib/modules/<old-kernel-versions>

Amerist · 11-02-2002, 12:44 PM

thanks for the help.

jdc2048 · 11-02-2002, 10:56 PM

Someone correct me if I am wrong, but you probably should use the "rpm -e" method so that the rpm database doesn't get all fouled up. That is assuming that you are installing the new kernels with a "rpm -i" option.

Jeremiah