remove unsupported packages after receiving HWE warning
 

Hi,

I've been running Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS all along and it's going well until recently I received the following message whenever I logged in:

========== START of MESSAGE ============
WARNING: Security updates for your current Hardware Enablement
Stack ended on 2016-08-04:
* http://wiki.ubuntu.com/1404_HWE_EOL

To upgrade to a supported (or longer-supported) configuration:

* Upgrade from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS by running:
sudo do-release-upgrade

OR

* Switch to the current security-supported stack by running:
sudo apt-get install linux-signed-image-generic-lts-xenial linux-signed-generic-lts-xenial

and reboot your system.

========== END of MESSAGE ============

I went to check my system status, it gave the following:
You have 47 packages (4.8%) supported until May 2017 (9m)
You have 3 packages (0.3%) supported until May 2017 (3y)
You have 695 packages (70.4%) supported until May 2019 (5y)
You have 114 packages (11.6%) supported until February 2015 (9m)

You have 10 packages (1.0%) that can not/no-longer be downloaded
You have 118 packages (12.0%) that are unsupported

Your Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE) is supported until April 2019.

So I don't quite understand why it prompted me for the upgrade.

Anyhow, I gave in and run the command below as instructed by the message:
sudo apt-get install linux-signed-image-generic-lts-xenial linux-signed-generic-lts-xenial

and rebooted it.

Then, I logged in and got the following:
The following packages are no longer supported:
linux-signed-generic-lts-utopic linux-image-3.16.0-52-generic linux-image-3.16.0-30-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-30-generic linux-image-3.16.0-69-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-55-generic linux-image-3.16.0-59-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-48-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-53-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-46-generic linux-image-3.16.0-60-generic linux-image-3.16.0-71-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-67-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-77-generic linux-image-3.16.0-48-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-52-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-69-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-50-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-70-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-60-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-59-generic linux-image-3.16.0-70-generic linux-image-3.16.0-57-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-62-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-49-generic linux-image-3.16.0-50-generic linux-image-3.16.0-73-generic linux-image-3.16.0-55-generic linux-image-3.16.0-62-generic linux-image-3.16.0-67-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-73-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-76-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-71-generic linux-image-3.16.0-76-generic linux-image-3.16.0-49-generic linux-image-3.16.0-77-generic linux-image-3.16.0-53-generic linux-image-3.16.0-46-generic linux-headers-generic-lts-utopic linux-signed-image-generic-lts-utopic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-57-generic

Please upgrade them to a supported HWE stack or remove them if you
no longer need them.

I'm wondering how I'd remove the items from the list above.

Here is the detail of my system:
Linux UbuntuServer 3.16.0-77-generic #99~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 28 19:17:10 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Thank you in advance

It's because you installed Ubuntu 14.04.2 and support for the kernel it came with has ended (the 3.16.x one backported from Ubuntu 14.10)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEn...Kernel_Support

If "uname -a" is still telling you that you're running the 3.16 kernel, then you need to bring up the grub menu and boot into the xenial/4.4.x kernel.

Again, you need to first make sure you're booted into the 4.4.x kernel. After that I'd guess this would do it:
Or, you could just copy the list and paste it after 'apt-get remove' (there will probably be some line breaks to remove).

Show unsupported apt-get packages.
 

You can run:
ubuntu-support-status

Which will give you output like this:

You have 4 packages (0.5%) supported until February 2018 (9m)
You have 641 packages (88.0%) supported until May 2019 (5y)

You have 2 packages (0.3%) that can not/no-longer be downloaded
You have 81 packages (11.1%) that are unsupported

You can also run this to get the list of unsupported:
ubuntu-support-status --show-unsupported