Removing older kernels from Ubuntu Karmic

Hey I’m back again! This time I think I should talk about the Grub a little bit, (if you are thinking that I’m gonna tell you how to remove grub 2 and install the previous one its better if you stop reading this). What I’m gonna tell you is “How to clean the usual Grub menu”.

When we do the updates, for an instance if we take ubuntu there are updates almost every week and among those there are kernel updates like every other week, so what basically happens is that, the grub menu will get filled up like the one in the image below

So how can we clean this mess?
First, you have to open a terminal and type,
uname -r
This will show you the current kernel you are using, (i.e. 2.6.31-20-generic for me) or remember the name of the kernel at the top of the menu, (for the above image its 2.6.27-11-generic). Now you have to go to System–> Administration –> Synaptic Package Manager. From there, in the Quick Search, type linux-image and this will enlist all the kernels that are available and also, the ones marked in green are the ones that are currently installed (here I’m gonna remove 2.6.31-19-generic). Right click on the one you want to remove and click on “Mark for removal”. Then again search for linux-headers and again mark for removal.

And finally Apply thats it !!

Warning!
Please remember to remove the ones you are not using only, and be careful to not to remove the current kernel that you are using because it’s possible to break ubuntu if you remove the wrong kernel.

The grub menu list will get updated automatically and you are free from old kernels.

I’ll meet you again with another post about the Grub till then
bye.

~~ Rusiru Boteju ~~

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