Adding a kernel removal script to linux-base or elsewhere

Jarno Suni j_suni at yahoo.co.uk
Tue May 24 11:29:52 UTC 2016


Now that linux-base is part of .?ubuntu 16.04, I think it would be good to add a linux-kernel removal tool to linux-base. On the other hand, I think such a script is especially useful for some older releases, since e.g. Trusty tends to mark kernel updates as being manually installed packages and as such 'apt-get autoremove --purge' can not purge them. (
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/vivid/+source/aptdaemon/+bug/1439769
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/1492709
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1175637)
If automatic removal of unneeded kernels is not enabled, /boot fills up, and blocks kernel updates:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/+bug/1054927

There is purge-old-kernels currently at byobu repository, but maybe it is too simple, and has some bugs:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/byobu/+bug/1569228
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bikeshed/+bug/1532153
I have rewritten it to fix those at 

https://github.com/dustinkirkland/bikeshed/pull/1
when purge-old-kernels was located at bikeshed, and as I have written in the (last) comment: "I have written an enhanced script for similar purpose again, but maybe it is not good to call it purge-old-kernels, since it can be used to purge newer kernels, too (but keeping the kernels that installed kernel meta packages depend on and given number of older ones). It currently uses linux-version from linux-base package to sort kernel releases as needed. I am looking for a suitable place to publish the bash script."

Finding meta kernel packages is problematic. I have used regular expression matching the package names: 
http://askubuntu.com/q/775830/21005It seems to work in Ubuntu, but not in Debian as such, I think. Also getting versioned kernels (and packages related to kernel of specific release) may be problematic in general:
https://lists.debian.org/deity/2016/05/msg00115.html

So how about adding some ubuntu-purge, linux-purge or kernel-purge in linux-base? Should it support 
kfreebsd-image and gnumach-image that are listed by "apt-config dump"?
-- 
Jarno Suni - http://iki.fi/8/ 




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