[sf-lug] boot is full

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Christian Einfeldt (einfeldt at gmail.com):

> Hi,
> 
> I am getting an error message when I boot up that says my /boot is full and
> that I need to delete some files.  Can I safely delete any of these files
> or folders?

You can (and should) delete any files that are _inside_ the lost+found
directory.

> christian at laptop:/boot$ ls -l
> total 41501
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  1005576 May 16 14:03 abi-3.11.0-22-generic
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   163267 May 16 14:03 config-3.11.0-22-generic
> drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     7168 May 27 13:29 grub
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 26012492 May 27 13:28 initrd.img-3.11.0-22-generic
> drwx------ 2 root root    12288 Feb 27 14:00 lost+found
> -rw------- 1 root root  3468883 May 16 14:03 System.map-3.11.0-22-generic
> -rw------- 1 root root  5910656 May 16 14:03 vmlinuz-3.11.0-22-generic

Going by your earlier posting, you have a 88M /boot partition.  Seems 
a bit uncomfortably small.  Any idea why you did that to yourself?
Also, I'm curious, why the separate /boot?

One of the bits of advice I give to new Linux users, which some even
listen to, is to keep track of major admin decisions you make in
building and administering your box, e.g., in a composition book or on a
legal pad that you devote to that purpose.  Partitioning would be one of
the things worth taking notes about.

Another one of those bits of advice is to plan to blow your initial
system away after a while and reinstall it, revisiting and improving on
those decisions you jotted down in your composition book or legal pad,
e.g., 'Oh, 88MB was radically too small for /boot, especially given that
I have 256GB [or whatever] total storage.'

Anyway, in /boot top-level, I see a 26MB initrd, a 5MB kernel image, 
a 3MB system map, and small change is a couple of text files.  So, an
obvious question:  What's eating the other 53MB?

Maybe you have a bunch of binary-garbage files in lost+found?  If so,
lose them, and there's your space back.

To whoever suggested deleting lost+found:  You can't.
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/Linux-Filesystem-Hierarchy/html/lostfound.html
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/18154/what-is-the-purpose-of-the-lostfound-folder-in-linux-and-unix

(I'm sure you _can_ delete the lost+found directory that's in the top
level of every filesystem other than some odd corner cases.  If so, 
don't.)

In the general case, most of the rationales that used to be frequently
cited for a separate /boot partition don't apply any more.  You've 
just seen the potential downside of this or any other separate
filesystem for a system tree.

If tempted to do odd things like resizing filesystem, do take the care
to do a proper backup, first.