HOWTO: Remove Older Kernels via GUI

[rkanth]

Thanks a lot, drs350, it worked! The computer is booting into Lucid without showing the grub now! And no removal of the Ubuntu Optimiser, either.

Can you just tell me how to be Root on GUIs , please...

Thanks or all the help. Much Appreciated.

RK

[drs305]

Thanks a lot, drs350, it worked! The computer is booting into Lucid without showing the grub now! And no removal of the Ubuntu Optimiser, either.

Can you just tell me how to be Root on GUIs , please...

Glad it's working for you.

For GUI apps, run the command with "gksu" - e.g. "gksu gedit, gksu nautilus". For non-GUI, use "sudo" - "sudo nano".

You can also install "nautilus-gksu" (sudo apt-get install nautilus-gksu) which will add a right click option to the file browser to "open as administrator". This would then allow you to delete folders/files as root, or once you have opened a folder as administrator, clicking on a file would open it 'as root'.

[geazzy]

nice tutorial...

[SuperFreak]

I realize this thread is designed to remove Older kernels but what about new kernels that do not seem to work. I have installed Linux 2.6.35.30 and 2.6.39.3 using Kernel Check and found the latter would not boot to a graphical interface just a tty interface. I installed Grub Customizer and hid these two kernels from the Grub menu so it now boots to 2.6.35.28. After I updated the Kernel to 2.6.39.3 I found I could not use K3B it comes up with an error message. So I am wondering if I should remove Linux 2.6.35.30 and 2.6.39.3 completely and if so is that safe and would I just use the instructions for "HOWTO: Remove Older Kernels via GUI"

Thanks

ed: I use 64 bit Ubuntu 10.10

[drs305]

I realize this thread is designed to remove Older kernels but what about new kernels that do not seem to work. ... So I am wondering if I should remove Linux 2.6.35.30 and 2.6.39.3 completely and if so is that safe and would I just use the instructions for "HOWTO: Remove Older Kernels via GUI"

Yes. It would be a good idea to remove non-working newer kernels as well, and you can use the same procedures. Since the kernels you want to remove may be higher version numbers, just make sure you know specifically which ones you want to delete.

I'd still recommend using Ubuntu Tweak, no matter whether they are old or new.

You can verify the currently-running (i.e. working) kernel with:

uname -r

Just make sure you keep that one.

[SuperFreak]

Thanks for your response. The newer kernels do not show up in Ubuntu Tweak although they do show up in Grub Customizer. I guess I will need to remove them with the non-graphical tools you provide.

[SuperFreak]

It worked without issue. Thank you

[wkitty42]

excellent tutorial... i'm glad i finally got to the point of wanting to remove the 20 someodd old kernels (all the way back to 2.6.15-??-server) from my ubuntu servers... since these are dedicated servers, there is no GUI so i'm especially glad for the CLI method...

i gained about 4-5G of space on each one... YAY!

[street spirit]

I don't like waking up an old thread, but this came up as the top result for "ubuntu remove old kernels" in Google.

This is in reply to the rmkernel function posted by slakkie (post #2):

I was using that shell script as guidance for a Perl script with a similar purpose. I had commented out the part that actually removes the old kernels and modules and just printed the candidates. That's where I noticed that the "linux-firmware" package (no version) is included in the list of packages to purge.

Is that a good idea? I'm hardly a specialist when it comes to kernels, but it looks like that package contains everything in /lib/firmware. I'm running Ubuntu 10.12 (Precise), and it's possible that package names have changed in the meantime.

In any case, be careful to take a good look at the list of packages to remove when you run this script.

[DawnDIY]

Thank you. Now I'm using Ubuntu Tweak to remove older kernels~