Cleaning up the list of o/s in a dual boot

Daniel Carrera daniel.carrera at zmsl.com
Thu Jun 15 09:27:34 UTC 2006


Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Yes. As root, open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst (make a backup first). 
> Keep scrolling down until you see lines that look like this:

Here is a better idea... before you do that, let's also remove all the 
kernel packages that you don't need. For example, suppose you decide 
that you will no longer need this bit:

title        Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-10-386
root         (hd0,0)
kernel       /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.12-10-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd       /boot/initrd.img-2.6.12-10-386
savedefault
boot

Because this kernel is old and you are using a new one (and you know 
that the new one works). You can remove the kernel with:

sudo aptitude remove linux-image-2.6.12-10-386

The reason for this (besides just cleaning up /boot/) is that next time 
you upgrade the kernel, Ubuntu will add those entries to menu.lst again. 
So it's better to just remove them.

You might be wondering why Ubuntu doesn't do this automatically. It's 
because there is always a chance that a new kernel will break something, 
or might not boot at all. If that happens, and you don't have a fall 
back kernel that is known to work, your computer becomes a paper weight. 
Is this likely to happen? No. But why take a chance?

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org

  "He he. Maybe the problem is with the left mouse button :)"
   -- Daniel on IRC after 5 hours trying to figure out
      why nothing worked on his thin client... (it was)





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