Problem in Ubuntu 9.10 GRUB wants more space

Was trying to update my 9.10 install. Seems like there are some new kernal updates which meant that somethings were being written to grub. My Grub is located in a separate /boot parition of about 99 mb (which used to be enough but is not suddenly not enough) and now i get this message “Volume Boot has only 698 kb disk space left”

You can free up disk space by removing unused programs or files or by removing files or programes to another partition or disk. The problem does not end there itself – all the current updates failed to get updated and now when i try synaptic i get the following error.

" E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report. "

and when i try the
sudo dpkg --configure -a
this is what happens

Setting up initramfs-tools (0.92bubuntu53) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-22-generic-pae
dpkg: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status
1
-laptop:~$

***
i have atleast 4 different kernals installed and am not sure how to navigate he new Grub – its not as easy as earlier and am not sure how to create more space .(there is a tutorial to move grub but it seems quite dicey to me)

This is affecting my OS performance as some programmes are beginning to crash or freeze (firefox) and i can’t help but think its because of incomplete updates. Also i cannot install new programmes or uninstall old ones (as in old kernals to free up space) apt-get also does not work.

so refine the problem – my 100 MB /boot has become over crowded with kernals and one of the stupidities of the new grub (ver 2) is that it tends to accumulate all the old kernals.

The Solutions

There were two suggestions using dpkg -r linux .......and in this to find the oldest linux headers that were available:

$ sudo dpkg -r linux-headers-2.6.31-
linux-headers-2.6.31-14    
linux-headers-2.6.31-15              linux-headers-2.6.31-20
linux-headers-2.6.31-16              linux-headers-2.6.31-20-generic-pae
linux-headers-2.6.31-16-generic-pae  linux-headers-2.6.31-21
linux-headers-2.6.31-18              linux-headers-2.6.31-21-generic-pae
linux-headers-2.6.31-18-generic-pae  linux-headers-2.6.31-22
linux-headers-2.6.31-19              linux-headers-2.6.31-22-generic-pae
linux-headers-2.6.31-19-generic-pae  linux-headers-2.6.31-9-rt
ram@ram-laptop:~$ sudo dpkg -r linux-headers-2.6.31-
linux-headers-2.6.31-15              linux-headers-2.6.31-20
linux-headers-2.6.31-16              linux-headers-2.6.31-20-generic-pae
linux-headers-2.6.31-16-generic-pae  linux-headers-2.6.31-21
linux-headers-2.6.31-18              linux-headers-2.6.31-21-generic-pae
linux-headers-2.6.31-18-generic-pae  linux-headers-2.6.31-22
linux-headers-2.6.31-19              linux-headers-2.6.31-22-generic-pae
linux-headers-2.6.31-19-generic-pae  linux-headers-2.6.31-9-rt

So i used

$ sudo dpkg -r linux-headers-2.6.31-14
(Reading database ... 671073 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing linux-headers-2.6.31-14 ...
laptop:~$

and now things seem back to normal

***
it seems dpkg is able to rifle through things that apt-get is prevented from so quite useful to know. so am now going to remove a few more of the old kernels and then do a reboot and see if my system is still all hunky dory.

Via UbuntuForums