CentOS - Sep 2016 - hacking grub to control number of retained kernels.

I've recently had this problem on two C7 systems, wherein when doing
"yum
update", I get a warning about /boot being low on space.

both systems were installed using the partition size recommended by
Anaconda, right now "df -h" shows /boot as 494M, with 79M free.

I don't store unrelated crap on /boot, I assume that yum and/or grub
will manage it for me. So, why, after over a year, is it running low
on space on two different systems?

Is there some location in /boot where junk piles up, but shouldn't,
that I have to know about so I can clean it out?

I see EIGHT initramfs files in /boot, two per kernel, same name but
one has a kdump just before the .img suffix. do I need those for old
kernels that I may or may not ever boot? (they're 30 to 50 MB each).

For the moment I've edited /etc/grub.conf and changed installonly_limit
from 4 to 3. (related question: do I need to manually remove the
oldest kernel, having done this, or will yum/grub clean it up the
next time there's a kernel to install?)

thanks!

Fred
-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us
-----------------------------
                       I can do all things through Christ 
                              who strengthens me.
------------------------------ Philippians 4:13 -------------------------------

On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 10:52:05PM -0400, Fred Smith
wrote:
> I've recently had this problem on two C7 systems, wherein when doing
"yum
> update", I get a warning about /boot being low on space.
> 
> both systems were installed using the partition size recommended by
> Anaconda, right now "df -h" shows /boot as 494M, with 79M free.
> 
> I don't store unrelated crap on /boot, I assume that yum and/or grub
> will manage it for me. So, why, after over a year, is it running low
> on space on two different systems?
> 
> Is there some location in /boot where junk piles up, but shouldn't,
> that I have to know about so I can clean it out?
> 
> I see EIGHT initramfs files in /boot, two per kernel, same name but
> one has a kdump just before the .img suffix. do I need those for old
> kernels that I may or may not ever boot? (they're 30 to 50 MB each).
> 
> For the moment I've edited /etc/grub.conf and changed installonly_limit
> from 4 to 3. (related question: do I need to manually remove the
> oldest kernel, having done this, or will yum/grub clean it up the
> next time there's a kernel to install?)
> 
I may be off-base here, but isn't that more a yum configuation issue?
What is the installonly_limit in /etc/yum.conf?

Jon
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                 jon at jgcomp.com
 11226 South Shore Rd.          (703) 787-0688 (H)
 Reston, VA  20190              (703) 935-6720 (C)

On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 11:30:17PM -0400, Jon LaBadie
wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 02, 2016 at 10:52:05PM -0400, Fred Smith wrote:
> > I've recently had this problem on two C7 systems, wherein when
doing "yum
> > update", I get a warning about /boot being low on space.
> > 
> > both systems were installed using the partition size recommended by
> > Anaconda, right now "df -h" shows /boot as 494M, with 79M
free.
> > 
> > I don't store unrelated crap on /boot, I assume that yum and/or
grub
> > will manage it for me. So, why, after over a year, is it running low
> > on space on two different systems?
> > 
> > Is there some location in /boot where junk piles up, but
shouldn't,
> > that I have to know about so I can clean it out?
> > 
> > I see EIGHT initramfs files in /boot, two per kernel, same name but
> > one has a kdump just before the .img suffix. do I need those for old
> > kernels that I may or may not ever boot? (they're 30 to 50 MB
each).
> > 
> > For the moment I've edited /etc/grub.conf and changed
installonly_limit
> > from 4 to 3. (related question: do I need to manually remove the
> > oldest kernel, having done this, or will yum/grub clean it up the
> > next time there's a kernel to install?)
> > 
> 
> I may be off-base here, but isn't that more a yum configuation issue?
> What is the installonly_limit in /etc/yum.conf?
Oh, senior moment... that actually is the file I changed. :(
(getting old ain't that much fun sometimes...)


-- 
---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us
-----------------------------
                       I can do all things through Christ 
                              who strengthens me.
------------------------------ Philippians 4:13 -------------------------------

On 2016-09-03, Fred Smith
<fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us> wrote:
> I've recently had this problem on two C7 systems, wherein when doing
> "yum update", I get a warning about /boot being low on space.
>
> both systems were installed using the partition size recommended by
> Anaconda, right now "df -h" shows /boot as 494M, with 79M free.
>
> I don't store unrelated crap on /boot, I assume that yum and/or grub
> will manage it for me. So, why, after over a year, is it running low
> on space on two different systems?
>
> Is there some location in /boot where junk piles up, but shouldn't,
> that I have to know about so I can clean it out?
>
> I see EIGHT initramfs files in /boot, two per kernel, same name but
> one has a kdump just before the .img suffix. do I need those for old
> kernels that I may or may not ever boot? (they're 30 to 50 MB each).
>
> For the moment I've edited /etc/grub.conf and changed
> installonly_limit from 4 to 3. (related question: do I need to
> manually remove the oldest kernel, having done this, or will yum/grub
> clean it up the next time there's a kernel to install?)
>
> thanks!
>
> Fred
I recommend the package-cleanup command from the yum-utils package. See
the '--oldkernels' option in particular; it will remove obsolete
kernels, i.e., those which are no longer installable from your yum
repositories.

-- 

Liam

On Fri, Sep 2, 2016, 8:52 PM Fred Smith <fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us>
wrote:
> I've recently had this problem on two C7 systems, wherein when doing
"yum
> update", I get a warning about /boot being low on space.
>
> both systems were installed using the partition size recommended by
> Anaconda, right now "df -h" shows /boot as 494M, with 79M free.
>
> I don't store unrelated crap on /boot, I assume that yum and/or grub
> will manage it for me. So, why, after over a year, is it running low
> on space on two different systems?
>
> Is there some location in /boot where junk piles up, but shouldn't,
> that I have to know about so I can clean it out?
>
> I see EIGHT initramfs files in /boot, two per kernel, same name but
> one has a kdump just before the .img suffix. do I need those for old
> kernels that I may or may not ever boot? (they're 30 to 50 MB each).
>
I think jump using /boot is a bad idea. I wonder if that's really
necessary? Anyway, long term solution from the anaconda list is increasing
/boot size to 1GiB.


Chris Murphy