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Re: removing modules



On 2021-07-03 at 13:28, mick crane wrote:

> On 2021-07-03 18:03, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>>> I looked because "apt upgrade" failed to install things in /boot 
>>> because no room left. I deleted the oldest kernel stuff of the 3 
>>> there and "apt upgrade" worked.
>> 
>> I hope you removed them by uninstalling their kernel packages, not
>> by just deleting the files from under /boot directly.
> 
> <cough> what happens if I might remove them by <cough> deleting them
> ?

If the files under /boot from a kernel package has been deleted, but
that package is still marked as installed, nothing bad should happen as
long as you don't try to do anything which would have used those files.

It's just that there's an inconsistency between what the package manager
thinks is present, and what's actually installed. Depending on how
things are implemented, the package manager might trigger doing
something with those files the next time you install or upgrade a
kernel, or it might not; I don't remember enough specific details just
at the moment to be sure, although I think you're probably safe in that
regard.

The good news is that A: as long as you know which files were deleted,
it should be fairly straightforward to figure out which packages they
came from, and

B: as long as you know which packages the deleted files came from, it
should be fine to remove the packages after the fact, thereby bringing
things back into sync.

The only issue should come about if somehow the removal scripts for the
package notice the absence of the files and can't handle it, and that
doesn't seem likely to me.

> I don't see any option from grub for booting different kernels.

Depending on what GRUB you have and how it's configured (and possibly on
exactly what files you had before the deletion), that might be normal.
For some while now, all GRUB on my own machines has been showing me is a
"boot the default kernel with the default arguments" option and a second
option to view more options; the latter menu, when I bother to check it,
usually shows at least one other kernel, as well as e.g. the
single-user-mode boot option for the default kernel.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

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