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When I perform an update, then informed me that I do not have enough disk space.

I have plenty of hard drive space so I just need to increase space on the partition that is allowed for ubuntu to use for operating system and updates.

The error message reads 

The upgrade needs a total of 26.7 M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free at least an additional 10.5 M of disk space on '/boot'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean

I have done sudo apt-get clean and still not enough space.

I have tried sudo apt-get autoclean then sudo apt-get update & sudo apt-get upgrade

enter image description here

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  • Which of them is? Hard disk space or RAM? What is the exact error message? What's the output of free and df -h?
    – Braiam
    Nov 15, 2013 at 20:30
  • The error message reads "The upgrade needs a total of 26.7 M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free at least an additional 10.5 M of disk space on '/boot'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean" I have done 'sudo apt-get clean' and still not enough space.
    – UbuntuFan
    Nov 15, 2013 at 20:46
  • The best way to add additional information to your question is by editing it, with the edit button. It is better visible that way, and comments are mainly for secondary, temporary purposes. Comments are removed under a variety of circumstances. Anything important to your question should be in the question itself.
    – Braiam
    Nov 15, 2013 at 20:49
  • We also need dpkg -l linux-image*
    – Braiam
    Nov 15, 2013 at 21:06
  • 1
    Possible duplicate of Can't upgrade due to low disk space on /boot
    – karel
    Jun 19, 2017 at 7:40

5 Answers 5

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I'm going to guess that Update Manager is trying to load a new kernel in /boot and there's not enough room, so we can free up space by removing older kernels.

Firstly and foremost, please be careful.

Let's look at what's in the /boot partition - I'll use Nautilus as Super User from my computer to provide an example. 

lkristie@TinMan:~$ sudo nautilus
[sudo] password for lkristie:

This is the procedure I follow when I need space for new kernels.

Open /boot when Nautilus comes up (screenshot below).

Note the tagged objects are all of the same version - delete them; I'd recommend this: free up the disk space you need and that's it.

If you're tempted to do some housekeeping here, understand the impact of whatever it is you decide to do and - if you're not sure - do the required reading before taking any action.

Leland

enter image description here

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Had the same problem with the GUI. Opened a terminal and entered my threefold:

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade && sudo apt-get autoremove

That's worked (But I don't know why :o) ).

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  • Hmmm... This seem to upgrade the distribution as well ( sudo apt-get dist-upgrade ), which isn't included in the question. It's probably a good idea to do, but it isn't something I would advise people to do regardless of anything. I follow this link and did sudo apt-get autoremove, but after that df -h in the terminal showed that I still had a problem. But by running sudo update-grub afterwards, then the capacity dropped from 96% to 55%.
    – Zeth
    Mar 23, 2021 at 9:35
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I had a similar problem and another post on a similar topic told me about a utility called Ubuntu Tweak and how to install it from the Terminal. It has solved my problem by removing old kernels and freeing lots of space.

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Since this is one of the highest ranked Google results and nobody actually answered your question, I figured I'd answer albeit 2 years late.

The first and easiest thing to try is

sudo apt-get autoremove

This will remove redundant packages to free up space. However, this isn't always a solution if for some reason you did not allocate enough space to the boot partition and you still don't have enough space after removing redundancies. If this is the case:

Install Ubuntu to an external disk (flash stick or similar), then live boot your system from that disk.

Install GParted from Ubuntu Software Center.

Find the partition with mount point: /boot . It will likely show that almost the entire partition is full/used.

Right-click and "resize" partition below /boot partition to create free, unallocated space after the /boot partition.

Right click and resize /boot partition, expanding it on the right into the free space created by resizing partition below.

Shut down, remove live boot Ubuntu drive & restart into your normal desktop environment.

Your boot partition now has more space.

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Try:

sudo apt-get autoclean

To get rid of old downloaded packages. Then, try to install the updates:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
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