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ddalley
October 26th, 2009, 07:56 PM
I've done my limited best to figure this problem out, but I'm stuck.

I've got a USB stick with just over 400Mb free and there are four kernal related files that won't update because the update manager thinks there isn't enough room free. These files add up to a total of 25Mb, at most.

The manager wants a minimum of 203Mb free and I've deleted just about all I really want to to increase the amount of free space (there is already double that amount), but it is never enough.

How do I solve this dilemma?

arrange
October 26th, 2009, 08:07 PM
Have you tried updating via the Terminal (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GnomeTerminal)? You can copy (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingTheTerminal#Pasting%20in%20commands) these commands and see if the files update or not.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If it does not work, post any error messages that come up and the output of
df -Th

ddalley
October 26th, 2009, 08:26 PM
After trying the first two commands, it still was not complete:

"The following packages have been kept back:
linux-generic linux-image-generic linux-restricted-modules-generic
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded."

Otherwise...

"$ df -Th
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1 ext2 3.0G 2.7G 129M 96% /
tmpfs tmpfs 1007M 0 1007M 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun tmpfs 1007M 100K 1006M 1% /var/run
varlock tmpfs 1007M 0 1007M 0% /var/lock
udev tmpfs 1007M 168K 1006M 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 1007M 572K 1006M 1% /dev/shm
lrm tmpfs 1007M 2.2M 1004M 1% /lib/modules/2.6.28-15-generic/volatile
/dev/sdb6 ext2 735M 294M 402M 43% /home
/dev/sda6 ext3 668G 30G 604G 5% /media/disk"

arrange
October 26th, 2009, 08:37 PM
You can try to make some free space by cleaning the apt cache
sudo apt-get cleanYou can also uninstall any old kernels if you have more than, say, two.

Then - if you need the new kernel - install it by running
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

nerdzero
October 26th, 2009, 08:51 PM
Could you use a live CD to resize the /home and / partitions on your USB stick? It looks like you have about 400MB free on /home but only 129MB on /

ddalley
October 26th, 2009, 08:55 PM
Clean did the job. Thanks!

"You can also uninstall any old kernels if you have more than, say, two."

I'd love to do this, too, but the only instructions I've seen to do it didn't apply to Ubuntu and couldn't work.

ddalley
October 26th, 2009, 09:06 PM
Could you use a live CD to resize the /home and / partitions on your USB stick? It looks like you have about 400MB free on /home but only 129MB on /
Not having enough room to upgrade after waiting just a bit too long was what caused the problem in the first place.

When it is stated Linux can be installed on 1 or 2Gb USB sticks, they don't take installing programs into account. Even this 4Gb one is barebones and I am only using 8Gb sticks for new installs now, as a minimum install space.

I have never resized partitions before, but I guess I can figure out how. Thanks for the tip!

bumanie
October 26th, 2009, 10:16 PM
"You can also uninstall any old kernels if you have more than, say, two."

I'd love to do this, too, but the only instructions I've seen to do it didn't apply to Ubuntu and couldn't work.

Easiest way to uninstall old kernels. Go to synaptic and type "linux-image" (without the quotes) in to search, right click the ones you want to remove and choose completely remove. Each one will save a little over 110mb of space. Then go to terminal and
sudo update-grub or if using grub 2
sudo upgrade-grub2A good partitioning tool is gparted.
sudo apt-get install gparted then to start the gparted gui
sudo gpartedThe rest is fairly straight forward, however any partitions you want to alter must be unmounted.