Error during kernel upgrade: gzip: stdout: No space left on device

There are times when you will be surprised that package managers does not automatically remove older archives of the software installed. This happened to in for the first time, when one of the systems I was managing suddenly returned an exit status 1.

Removing the offensive application to free up much needed space is sure to fail! especially if the application mentioned here is a kernel.

Consider this line:
------------------------------

Setting up libcups2 (1.4.6-5ubuntu1.3) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-generic:
linux-image-generic depends on linux-image-2.6.38-10-generic; however:
Package linux-image-2.6.38-10-generic is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-image-generic (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-generic:
linux-generic depends on linux-image-generic (= 2.6.38.10.25); however:
Package linux-image-generic is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing linux-generic (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
Setting up linux-headers-2.6.38-10 (2.6.38-10.46) ...
Setting up linux-headers-2.6.38-10-generic (2.6.38-10.46) ...
Setting up linux-headers-generic (2.6.38.10.25) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 gzip 1
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic
dpkg: error processing initramfs-tools (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-image-2.6.38-10-generic
linux-image-generic
linux-generic
initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


If you are guessing that /boot is in deep trouble. You are correct. Now, the tricky part is this. Issue a purge; autoremove won't do the trick because the drive no longer has enough space. What do you do next?

1. If it is a kernel (old one) that needs to be removed, look closely at your grub.conf or grub.cfg configuration and Identify the kernels you no longer need. Check the currently loaded kernel by issuing uname -r.

2. Take note of the files that needs to be moved, in our example its a debian based system so you will have to move these files: abi, config, initrd.img, System.map, vmcoreinfo, vmlinuz. Just remove/move those that you don't need.

3. Once done issue the command updatedb to update the slocate database of the filesystem

4. Now you can issue the upgrade command back and this will install the new kernel correctly.