When will Ubuntu clean up after updates?

It may be unfair to single-out Ubuntu in this issue, since it may also be an issue with other distributions as well. Regardless, it is 2016 and it seems noteworthy that the annoying "Not enough free disk space" error during regular updates is still a thing.

In the faint chance that there are those who are unaware of this scenario, this is it. The Software Updater application gathers the next round of updates. Upon application, the following error message is encountered.

The error suggests running apt-get clean to resolve the issue.

The error suggests running the clean option against the apt-get command, which seems to be something of a red herring, as it does nothing. Instead, the following will take care of things.

From the command line:

dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-image

This will list all the current kernels that are hogging up the /boot directory.

Run the following to remove unused kernel packages.

sudo apt-get purge UNUSED-KERNEL

There are two things to note:

The UNUSED-KERNEL note will need to be replaced with the actual name of older kernels that should be removed.
Do not remove linux-image-generic.

The full text of the error message is:

The upgrade needs a total of 109 M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free at least an additional 51.6 M of disk space on '/boot'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean'

Note that the actual file sizes will vary by system and installation parameters.

The truth of the matter, is that the solution to the problem is not difficult. It is however frustrating that the situation isn't handled automatically during the update process. Little fit-and-finish items like this are the rough edges that Linux distributions still snag users from time-to-time.

Comments

Skype Now Supports Emergency Calls In the US

With the latest round of updates to Skype , it was noticed today that the instant messaging and VoIP phone service now supports emergency calling in the United States. The release notes for the most recent update to the Android version of Skype indicated that the service now allows calls to be made to US emergency calling systems via 911. Telephony services like Skype, Google Voice , and Vonage typically don't offer this emergency calling ability without some sort of intermediate step like deferring to the phone's default dialer, as is the case with Voice, or setting up a physical address location ahead of time which is how Vonage handles it. The indication is that Skype will handle the 911 calls natively, but when verifying with an account that does not have a Skype phone number assigned to it, it was found that the instructions in the FAQ explaining how to turn on emergency calling are not accurate. Emergency calling support in Skype for the United States Interestingly, th...

Allow Windows authentication using SQL Server driver with DBeaver

DBeaver will allow Microsoft Windows single sign on access when connecting to Microsoft SQL Server using the SQL Server driver (rather than jTDS ). From the driver properties settings, set the integratedSecurity flag to true . Open the Connection configuration panel and choose the Driver properties section. Set the integratedSecurity flag to true . A subtle, but important step is to not provide username and password credentials to the connection.

Chrome Itself Logs Into Google When Logged Into Company's Services

Google has taken the liberty of logging Chrome into the user's account whenever logged in to any Google service. Some time ago, Google introduced the ability to have its browser, Chrome, log into the user's Google account whenever the user authenticated for any Google service. That is, log in to Google Docs, for example, and the browser would be logged in as well. The pitch was that this relationship between being logged in to a service and the browser also being logged in, can help mitigate confusion when a user logs out of a Google service but fails to realize the browser is still logged in. The mystery can be eliminated if the browser keeps the two in the same state automatically. There is the added benefit that the browser would be better able to synchronize the user experience across each browser that was also logged into the user's account. For example, Chrome on a mobile device could have access to the history from Chrome on a laptop. The idea is not nove...

Orsburn (Static Content)

Search This Blog