Please help me. /boot full. What do I do :(

kevinas716 · 07-04-2019, 03:08 PM

Something went wrong during my recent update process.
I now try:
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
and get errors.

As such I try:
sudo apt autoremove
and continue to get errors.

In the past sudo apt autoremove would fix my /boot full issues, but today it's not working.

I'm so lost as to what to do.

It says:
"2 not fully installed or removed."
However both commands to either upgrade or remove dont work.
Log below.

Would love some assistance!

Code:

admin@user123:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Setting up initramfs-tools (0.130ubuntu3.8) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Setting up linux-firmware (1.173.8) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 gzip 1
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package linux-firmware (--configure):
 installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.130ubuntu3.8) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 gzip 1
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
 installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-firmware
 initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
admin@user123:~$ sudo apt autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up initramfs-tools (0.130ubuntu3.8) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Setting up linux-firmware (1.173.8) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 gzip 1
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package linux-firmware (--configure):
 installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.130ubuntu3.8) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 gzip 1
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.1.15-050115-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
 installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-firmware
 initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
admin@user123:~$ df
Filesystem                   1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev                           1975276       0   1975276   0% /dev
tmpfs                           403696     864    402832   1% /run
/dev/mapper/user123--vg-root  22079356 6237464  14697268  30% /
tmpfs                          2018472       0   2018472   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs                             5120       0      5120   0% /run/lock
tmpfs                          2018472       0   2018472   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1                       482922  443870     14118  97% /boot
tmpfs                           403692       0    403692   0% /run/user/1000
admin@user123:~$

dc.901 · 07-04-2019, 03:55 PM

You will have to remove old kernels; see this post:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/2232...ing-the-kernel

How big is /boot?

What is the exact "autoremove" command did you run and what was the output?

X-LFS-2010 · 07-05-2019, 01:18 PM

what a strange configuration - you have a /boot partition that is limited in size? usually people use "whole disk" installation since the early 2000's (unlimited /boot size)

is that debian or ubuntu that did that or did you create your own /boot partition ?

anyway be CAREFUL about removing files from /boot - it may cause you to be unable to boot

and my ad is that using debian you can expect to have many more such "issues", though in this channel i will not say why

X-LFS-2010 · 07-05-2019, 01:21 PM

if /boot is on the same disk as /var, then you can find some files you can remove in /var

show use your fstab(5) so we know what we're saying in answering you

dc.901 · 07-05-2019, 01:50 PM

@X-LFS-2010 - This is a known issue in Ubuntu 16.10; problem is old kernels do not get purged after apt update, so /boot (which is created by installer), and have to be cleaned up manually.
I have read that this problem is resolved in 18.x.

syg00 · 07-05-2019, 06:10 PM

I tried the commands in the link above on a Mint system I'm responsible for. Interest only as I'm not an apt-based system user normally.
Read the output really carefully. I specified the oldest kernel for deletion and it selected four - plus headers and modules as expected. I was planning on getting rid of them all eventually, but didn't expect (and don't know why) the other later kernels to be considered dependencies.