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math
Asked: 2012-02-03 02:27:46 +0800 CST

How can I remove old linux-images when installing new kernel updates? [duplicate]

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Possible Duplicate:
Is there a way to remove/hide old kernel versions?

On my laptop I have limited space but install all new updates, including kernel updates. However, Ubuntu doesn't seem to uninstall old kernels after installing a new kernel update. I guess this happens with reason: since the new kernel might fail, and it would be nice if GRUB provided a way to select the old kernel to boot with. But do I really need the whole history?, I guess not!:

rc linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.32-24-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.32-25-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.35-22-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.35-23-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.35-24-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.35-25-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.35-27-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.35-28-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.35-30-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.38-10-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.38-11-generic
ii linux-image-2.6.38-12-generic
rc linux-image-2.6.38-8-generic
ii linux-image-3.0.0-12-generic
ii linux-image-3.0.0-13-generic
ii linux-image-3.0.0-14-generic
ii linux-image-3.0.0-15-generic
ii linux-image-3.0.0-16-generic
ii linux-image-generic

I thought apt-get autoremove should remove at least some of those images, but it doesn't. I will remove those now by hand, but isn't there a way to do this automatically and to keep, let's say, the last three images? Yes a shell script and a cron job! Any alternatives?

package-management kernel software-uninstall

2 Answers

  1. Why aren't old linux-images removed when installing new kernel updates?

    Why should they get removed? To the system, there's no reason to do so. They can happily co-exist and if you are experiencing boot problems with the new kernel, you'll be happy that the old one didn't get removed.

    But do I really need the whole history?

    I only keep the old kernel until I'm sure the new one works fine. Updates usually should improve things, so running old kernels isn't advisable.

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  2. Best Answer

    You can use Ubuntu Tweak to remove old kernels in an easy way and to do many other useful things. Here is an article explaining some of its features.

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