Remove-Unused-Kernel-Packages leaves unused linux-hwe-.*-headers-.* packages around

[Jarno Suni]

If user has linux-generic-hwe-18.04 installed, versioned linux-headers packages depend on versioned linux-hwe-5.4-headers packages that will not get removed. Consequently in time there will be hundreds of thousands of unused files under /usr/src. For example I have about 450000 totalling 1.4 GB. The number of inodes may be bigger issue, because file systems have some limitations.

I noted the issue when using my linux-purge tool. It is supposed to be able to remove kernels, even if the file system runs out of inodes.

Workaround:

Install linux-purge from https://launchpad.net/linux-purge and run

sudo linux-purge

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: unattended-upgrades 1.1ubuntu1.18.04.14
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-81.91~18.04.1-generic 5.4.128
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-81-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.24
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Sep 5 14:38:49 2021
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-09-05 (1826 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Mythbuntu 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release i386 (20160719)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: unattended-upgrades
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2019-04-06 (882 days ago)
modified.conffile..etc.apt.apt.conf.d.10periodic: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.apt.apt.conf.d.10periodic: 2018-03-26T11:42:30.041160

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

Works by 2.3ubuntu0.3 but there is no such update for 18.04.