Updater can't update kernel due to disk space

[Dustin Kirkland]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Adam Conrad <adconrad at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2015 at 08:37:00AM -0600, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> >
> > Around that time a few years ago, I wrote the "purge-old-kernels" command (
> > http://manpg.es/purge-old-kernels), which does a very effective job of saving
> > your current kernel, and one other known working kernel, while deleting the
> > rest.  I was working on getting that into the distro (and out of the bikeshed
> > package), but Adam Conrad told me that apt would fix this, itself.  I've CC'd
> > Adam.  Can you advise us, Adam?
>
> apt does do this itself (via 'apt-get autoremove'), the missing puzzle
> piece is that none of the friendly upgraders (like update-manager) do
> automatic autoremove runs.  It's probably time to revisit this policy.

Aha!  So I have autoupdate enabled, which keeps my packages (and
kernels updated).  But in the process, that basically guarantees that
my disk will get filled, automatically, given enough time....  That's
definitely not ideal!

Let's do revisit this :-)

> I can see several ways "power users" can shoot themselves in the foot
> with autoremove, but no way that "normal people" can, and I'm not sure
> catering to people who think they're clever doing unclever things is
> the right default.

Autoremoving kernels, when you have lots of them, and as long as you
keep your current one (and one other known good one), should be very
safe, for almost any user.

> CCing Michael for opinions.
>
> ... Adam
>