Comment 10 for bug 1183692

Revision history for this message
manfreed (manfreed) wrote :

This is still an issue in 14.10

This error message is too general, it doesn't give us a specific solution:

"The upgrade needs a total of 86,4 M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free at least an additional 32,2 M of disk space on '/boot'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean'."

The minimum is to offser solution based on the partition. For /boot the proper solution would be to tell the users to remove old kernels. They wouldn't be able to do themselves without help or proper knowledge, but at least the message wouldn't be confusing.

The best solution I can think of:

If the problematic partition is /boot, and there are more than one installed kernels:

Tell the users that their boot partition is filled with older kernels which are mostly of no use. Tell them that they are safe to remove, and offer them to remove manually. Let the user choose which kernel they want to keep tough. A list of kernels with checkboxes would be fine, just check the old kernels by default and don't let the users to select eveything. If they try, tell them why it isn't a good idea.

Another problem is that apt wouldn't even complain about not having enough space, it just tries to do it's job and fails.