Remove Old Kernels in Ubuntu
If you've been using Ubuntu Linux for a while, then you probably have a number of Linux kernel updates that have been installed on your system. (I've got a total of 3 kernels in my Karmic system already.) In all likelihood, these updates get installed and you boot into the latest kernel, never to use the older kernels again. But these old kernels are still hanging around on your system, cluttering up your grub boot screen and taking up space on your hard drive.
There have been attempts made to create an automatic tool to clean these up for you along with much discussion on the Ubuntu Forums, but so far there's nothing officially in the repositories.
In the past, I've gone into Synaptic and searched for the older kernels and related packages and manually marked them for removal. This method works fine, but the search process is a little slow in Synaptic and you have to run a few searches to catch all of the packages to remove. I decided to come up with a way to do this from the terminal and hopefully save some time. The commands I'm going to use can be a bit daunting, so just copy and paste.
Warning
Don't follow this process unless you're sure you don't need to boot into the older kernels. If you're not sure, just leave things alone. Also, it is possible to remove all of the kernels from your system and make it unbootable. I suggest leaving the latest kernel and one version previous to that. You can find out the kernel version that you're currently running with
uname -rFind and remove old kernels
The first step is to figure out what kernels are installed. The following command will do the job.
ls /boot | grep vmlinuz | cut -d'-' -f2,3Your result should look something like this.
2.6.28-15
2.6.28-16
2.6.28-17This is the list of kernels installed on your system. Now you want to find out which packages are installed relative to the kernel you want to remove. For my example I'm going to remove the oldest one, 2.6.28-15.
dpkg -l | grep ^ii | grep 2.6.28-15 | awk -F' ' '{ print $2 }'On my system, (Jaunty) the resulting list is:
linux-headers-2.6.28-15
linux-headers-2.6.28-15-generic
linux-image-2.6.28-15-generic
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.28-15-genericNow that we know what packages to remove we can remove them with dpkg, apt-get or aptitude.
sudo aptitude remove linux-headers-2.6.28-15 linux-headers-2.6.28-15-generic linux-image-2.6.28-15-generic linux-restricted-modules-2.6.28-15-genericThat's it. You've removed an old kernel and related packages. Now you can keep your system as clean as it is right after you install Ubuntu. The commands are a bit complex, so maybe I'll write up a bash script when I have some time. Proceed with caution!
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Oh and also, you can just comment out the relevant lines in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01autoremove to have your package manager do this for you. I'd consider this this the preferred method.
Zach - Another nice tip. If I comment the lines
"^linux-image.*";
"^linux-restricted-modules.*";
"^linux-ubuntu-modules-.*";
would the old kernels be removed automatically, or would I have to run
sudo apt-get autoremoveI had previously found this in a bug report on launchpad. Does about the same thing.
dpkg -l 'linux-*' | sed '/^ii/!d;/'"$(uname -r | sed "s/\(.*\)-\([^0-9]\+\)/\1/")"'/d;s/^[^ ]* [^ ]* \([^ ]*\).*/\1/;/[0-9]/!d' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purgeZach - Wow, that's one monster of a command! That one is going to take a while to digest. It looks like the
uname -r | sedpart of the command filters out the current kernel and then only the older kernels are fed into theapt-get purgecommand.I might suggest removing the
-yfrom the final portion of the command to run apt-get interactively.I use ubuntu-tweak for doing it for me... and lot more
_ATOzTOA
http://www.atoztoa.com
[...] Remove Old Kernels in Ubuntu [...]
[...] been installed on your system. (I’ve got a total of 3 kernels in my Karmic system already.) More here In all likelihood, these updates get installed and you boot into the latest kernel, never to use [...]
@linerd I believe so, unless of course, you use aptitude and it just does that automatically.
Or far more user-friendly, you can just search for "linux" into synaptic and uninstall the older kernels and related packages...
[...] Fonte do post aqui. [...]
Wow !! it works like charm !!
Thanks Zach! Worked like magic and no pain and suffering on the user end!
Cheers,
Barb
wowwww.its really awesome and seems like magic....!
Thanks for sharing Dude
Thanks for great post, keep it up
Awesome, Zach! Thanks! Keep showin' us how it's done!
great....
I found this script on the net some time ago, works wonders:
Yep, that's the same one that Zach posted above. It removes all but the most recent kernel (I think. I'm not sure if avoids removing the currently running kernel, or if it avoids removing the latest).