Removing Old Kernels

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, Jatin Davey <daveyjatin at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Jatin Davey <daveyjatin at gmail.com>
> Subject: Removing Old Kernels
> To: "User Mail List-Ubuntu" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Date: Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 9:57 PM
> Hi all
> 
> I installed ubuntu 4 weeks ago. When i had installed i was
> having kernel 
> 2.6.31-14 , then after receiving updates currently i am
> having 
> 2.6.31-16. Still i have the old kernels available in my
> system. I want 
> to remove the old kernels and run only the latest one. If
> ubuntu has 2-3 
> kernels just in case any of them fails then i am fine.
> Please also let 
> me know if i am missing something. I just dont want the
> kernels to pile 
> up after every update and increase my disk usage.
> 
> Thanks
> Jatin
> 
>
It's a good idea to keep one or two kernels besides the one you normally use just in case it becomes unbootable then you can fall back to the extra ones in the grub boot list.  It does no harm to keep all the kernel installed since you installed the OS.  In my karmic case, I have all still installed since the original beta installation.
If you must rm some of them then first do:
aptitude search linux-image  then highlight the one(s) you want to remove so you can paste it in the following command:

sudo aptitude purge <paste the name(s) you want to remove>
Do purge instead of remove so the modules/headers will be removed for that kernel image also.

Or you can use synaptic package manager, search for the linux-images, then select all the ones you want to remove, click on that image(s) and select completely remove and then click on apply in the top panel.  I believe that's correct but didn't look and it should be apparent.

Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net