Long ago, far away, and right next door, Nick and I discussed Ubuntu and its kernel management.
It all started with my comment that it is wasteful to have all these kernels lying around and never booted into again.
I went searching and did not find much on how to remove those old kernels in an efficient way but eventually I figured it out.
Then Nick wrote it into a script to automate this functionality so I decided to share it with the world. We use this in our vmForge auto-install ISO images after the install has finished and the system updated.
Disclaimer: no warranties, blah blah, you’re on your own, don’t blame the messenger, always eat your vegetables.
#!/bin/sh
echo Removing old kernels
a=`uname -a | awk '{print $3}' | cut -f "1 2" -d -`
for i in `ls /boot | grep vmlinuz | cut -f "2 3" -d -`; do
if [ "$i" != "$a" ]; then
dpkg -l | awk '{print $2}' | grep $i | xargs apt-get -y remove
dpkg -l | awk '{print $2}' | grep $i | xargs dpkg --purge
rm -fr /lib/modules/$i-server
fi
done
And there ya have it.