1

My /boot partition is 500M in size, as I thought it would be enough when I did the installation. It seems it isn't.

Now it's almost full

/dev/sda1               446M  352M   61M  86% /boot

Doing apt-get upgrade doesn't succeed:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-25-generic
Error 24 : Write error : cannot write compressed block 
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 lz4 -9 -l 24
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-25-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:
 initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Contents of the /boot:

total 343M
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 248K kesä   17 01:38 config-5.11.0-22-generic
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 248K heinä   9 20:42 config-5.11.0-25-generic
drwx------  6 root root 4,0K tammi   1  1970 efi
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 4,0K heinä  23 13:13 grub
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 153M heinä  10 14:22 initrd.img-5.11.0-22-generic
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 151M heinä  23 13:13 initrd.img-5.11.0-25-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   28 heinä  23 06:04 initrd.img.old -> initrd.img-5.11.0-22-generic
drwx------  2 root root  16K heinä   6 08:52 lost+found
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 179K elo    18  2020 memtest86+.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 181K elo    18  2020 memtest86+.elf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 181K elo    18  2020 memtest86+_multiboot.bin
-rw-------  1 root root 5,7M kesä   17 01:38 System.map-5.11.0-22-generic
-rw-------  1 root root 5,7M heinä   9 20:42 System.map-5.11.0-25-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   25 heinä  23 06:04 vmlinuz -> vmlinuz-5.11.0-25-generic
-rw-------  1 root root  15M kesä   17 01:55 vmlinuz-5.11.0-22-generic
-rw-------  1 root root  15M heinä   9 21:04 vmlinuz-5.11.0-25-generic
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   25 heinä  23 06:04 vmlinuz.old -> vmlinuz-5.11.0-22-generic

Do I need to resize my boot partition? Is there a way to do the upgrade without resizing boot partition?

ile
  • 393

2 Answers2

3

try

to check installed kernels first

dpkg --list | egrep -i --color 'linux-image|linux-headers' | wc -l

to delete older versions of kernel

sudo apt --purge <kernel> autoremove

or


sudo apt-get --purge <kernel> autoremove

its mostly wise to keep older kernels to revert back to incase u face some problems

Zeiss Ikon
  • 5,248
Henzo
  • 86
0

Based on what I see in your /boot volume, it looks to me like you need to resize that volume. BE SURE YOU BACK UP EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU START!

I say this because the initramfs entries for two kernels are taking up close to two thirds of the space you've allowed in /boot (with other files taking up most of the remaining third). There's not room for another kernel, headers, config, and initramfs. As a temporary fix, you could follow @Henzo's answer to remove the older of the two kernels, but I like to be sure I have at least one older kernel in case a bug pops up or a file gets damaged.

If you're going to put your boot files in their own volume, I'd suggest (with modern 5.x kernels) you need to allow 2 GB to ensure you have enough for two or three older kernels plus the one you're installing for your upgrade. With modern hard disks and SSDs, this isn't a huge amount of space, but it's cheap insurance against having to resize a critical partition...

Zeiss Ikon
  • 5,248