removing unused kernels

[Tez]

Christopher J. Bottaro wrote:
> Jose Gomez-Dans wrote:
>
>   
>> On 7/20/06, Christopher J. Bottaro <cjbottaro at alumni.cs.utexas.edu> wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>> apt has installed a few kernels and now I want to get rid of the old
>>> ones. How do I see a list of the kernels currently installed?
>>>       
>> If you remove the linux-image packages that you don't want with adept,
>> the associated "restricted-modules" packages will also be removed
>> (they depend on the particular kernels)
>>     
>
> Ahh, thanks, that's what I was looking for...but it doesn't remove the
> installed kernel headers.
>
> $ dpkg -l | grep linux-image
> linux-image-2.6.15-23-686
> linux-image-2.6.15-26-686
> linux-image-686
>
> What confuses me is 'linux-image-686'.  I'm guessing that's some kind of
> meta package that I should just leave alone.
>
> Meta packages confuse me in general.  When should I install them or remove
> them?
>
> Thanks.
>
>   
All the linux-image-686 meta package dose it depend on the latest
version of the 686 kernel, because dpkg treats each kernel image as a
different package, if a new kernel version comes out it wont be updated.
The meta package just makes sure you have the latest available kernel.
They are also used for transition, eg the firefox package was called
"mozilla-firefox" but was renamed to "firefox" so the "mozilla-firefox"
package is just a meta package that installs the firefox package, you
can then remove "mozilla-firefox" package and keep firefox.

You can remove them when ever you want as they don't really do anything
on their own, they just depend on other packages.

Tez