Installation without formatting fails to remove old kernels
Bug #690911 reported by
Phillip Susi
This bug affects 13 people
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
ubiquity (Ubuntu) |
Confirmed
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: ubiquity
When installing without formatting the target partition, the installer deletes various system files to avoid conflicts, including /lib, however it leaves existing kernels in /boot. These should also be removed since they become broken when their corresponding modules in /lib are deleted, and if they are newer than the ones being reinstalled ( likely ) they will become the default kernel leaving you with an unbootable system.
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An ever bigger problem is that the installer leaves behind all the stale kernels in /boot. I can see keeping the most recent good kernel, and even perhaps the next-oldest version, but kernels older than that should be removed by ubiquity. If you allocate /boot to a separate partition, as I do, even a reasonably-sized boot partition (say 256 MB) can fill up if you're running a development release. I've been running Kubuntu 12.04b2 for a while now, and this morning had half-a-dozen kernel images in /boot. All the space was consumed, and the installer was unable to build a matching initrd image.
It would also result in a much cleaner set of options in the list at boot.