Boot partition on raspberrypi image to small for updates

[sam tygier]

Steps to reproduce.

1) Install from ubuntu-mate-16.04.2-desktop-armhf-raspberry-pi.img.xz (unzip, dd to sd card, put in pi, boot, set up username etc in firstboot wizard)
2) Open software updater (System -> Administration -> Software Updater)
3) Once it has found a list of updates, click Install Now
4) Updates aborts with message
"Not enough free disk space"
"The upgrade needs a total of 48.2 M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free an additional 4,063 k of disk space on '/boot' ..."

Running "sudo apt autoremove" does not help as there are no old kernels to clean up.

The /boot partition is 63MB, I guess it should be increased, at least to ~70MB so that the initial updates will work, but maybe 128MB or 200MB would be more future proof.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

There are several reports in forums e.g. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=178073 https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/raspberry-boot/12065

[Iván Balseiro García (ivan-balseiro91)]

I have reported it also but I found a solution, delete the kernel from boot that doesnt correspond to your device, for example if you have a rpi3b delete the kernel.img and if you have other rpi delete the kernel7.img and you will have space.

You need to go to /boot and do it as admin:

cd /boot
sudo su
(enter password)
rm kernel.img or kernel7.img depending on the device.

Good luck!

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Can you reproduce this bug with newer version of Ubuntu MATE?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu MATE because there has been no activity for 60 days.]