Yum update requires more room in /boot [RESOLVED]

[bananapar]

A recent yum update contained errors when updating.

raise Errors.YumBaseError, errors
yum.Errors.YumBaseError: [('installing package kernel-2.6.32.41-4.art.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /boot filesystem', (9, '/boot', 2408448L)), ('installing package kernel-2.6.32.41-4.art.x86_64 needs 3MB on the /boot filesystem', (9, '/boot', 2408448L))]

a du --si of /boot shows it to be 78M in total.
the contents of the /boot directory contain lots of very similar files, a small excerpt of this is shown below

Oct 25 2010 xen.gz-2.6.18-194.17.4.el5
Nov 9 2010 xen.gz-2.6.18-194.26.1.el5
Jan 5 22:45 xen.gz-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5
Apr 1 23:32 xen.gz-2.6.18-238.5.1.el5
Apr 12 23:03 xen.gz-2.6.18-238.9.1.el5

Would it be safe to remove the first three from that list? In general should I be OK to remove files with similar names excepting version? I suspect yes but don't want to make assumptions and then break everything. It seems odd that so many would be kept if they weren't needed for something.

[paulie]

Hi,

Its because you always install a new kernel rather than updating a previous one. Eventually your /boot fills up with these old kernels. You're probably ok to delete the files, but its not a neat way of doing things, instead you're better off doing this : http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/debian-red ... l-command/

Paul.

[breun]

How many kernel packages do you have installed? What is installonly_limit in /etc/yum.conf set to?

[bananapar]

Thanks Paulie, we have it sorted out now.

How many kernel packages do you have installed? What is installonly_limit in /etc/yum.conf set to?

yum.conf install only was set to 5, if I set it to 3 I think that might prevent issues in the future whilst still allowing us to go back if required

In terms of various kernels we have loads. If you're interested we have:

• config, (.el5xen and .x86_64)
  initrd (el5xen.img and x86_64.img)
  system.map (el5xen, x86_64)
  vmlinuz (el5xen, x86_64)
  xen.gz (el5)
  xen-syms (el5)

No wonder it had filled up!

[breun]

In terms of various kernels we have loads. If you're interested we have:

• config, (.el5xen and .x86_64)
  initrd (el5xen.img and x86_64.img)
  system.map (el5xen, x86_64)
  vmlinuz (el5xen, x86_64)
  xen.gz (el5)
  xen-syms (el5)

No wonder it had filled up!

Those are different files related to a single kernel release. What's the output of rpm -qa | grep kernel | sort?

[bananapar]

This is it currently:
kernel-2.6.32.27-1.art.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32.28-1.art.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32.41-3.art.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32.41-4.art.x86_64
kernel-firmware-2.6.32.41-4.art.x86_64
kernel-headers-2.6.32.41-4.art.x86_64
kernel-xen-2.6.18-194.32.1.el5.x86_64
kernel-xen-2.6.18-238.12.1.el5.x86_64
kernel-xen-2.6.18-238.9.1.el5.x86_64
kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-238.12.1.el5.x86_64
kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-238.5.1.el5.x86_64
kernel-xen-devel-2.6.18-238.9.1.el5.x86_64
yum-kernel-module-1.1.16-14.el5.centos.1.noarch

[breun]

Are you using those Xen kernels? If not, I'd remove kernel-xen*, which will probably give you lots of space on /boot back.