Note. Before rebooting, regenerate initramfs for all kernel versions. I am not in debian, but dpkg-reconfigure initramfs-tools might do it.
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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Write error : cannot write block : No space left on device
Seems like your boot partition is full.
For some reason the Debian installer likes to make a tiny /boot so you can only fit 2-3 kernels at most. Try removing some old ones first.
would you help the noob here and explain how to do that?
List all installed kernels:
dpkg -l | grep linux-image | awk '{print$2}'
Remove certain kernels:
sudo apt remove --purge linux-image-XXX
where XXX is the kernel version you wish to remove, as printed above. Repeat as needed until all unwanted kernels have been removed.
Then update grub:
sudo update-grub2
And reboot:
sudo reboot
thanks. I did all that. Is it safe to reboot? don't want to ruin the machine
I would run a final update-initramfs -u -k all before a reboot
just to avoid misunderstandings, I assume the final >french accent lemmy wont show< in your code is lemmy code and you forgot to type the >french accent lemmy wont show< at the beginning of the command, right? because the one without the >french accent lemmy wont show< returns -bash: update-initramfs: command not found
incidentally, another member suggested I run sudo dpkg-reconfigure initramfs-tools
it returns:
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.148.3) ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 zstd: error 70 : Write error : cannot write block : No space left on device E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 E: mkinitramfs failure zstd -q -9 -T0 70 update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 with 1. dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure): installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: initramfs-tools
but this is something I don't understand. I deleted 6 old kernels already. There are only 3 left.
After checking KDE Partition Manager for /boot and /boot/efi both have free space left:
/boot size: 488 MiB
/boot used: 396.26 MiB
/boot/efi size: 512 MiB
/boot/efi used: 10.52 MiB
I've created a small helper script to help me with this:
#!/bin/bash
USED_VER=$(uname -r)
echo "Kernel version in use: $USED_VER"
echo "Other installed versions:"
dpkg --list 'linux-image*' | grep ^ii | grep -v $USED_VER
echo "Remove unneeded packages above using the following command:"
echo "sudo apt remove linux-image-VERSION"
It prints a list of the installed kernels (excl. the running one) and prints the command to uninstall the packages (it doesn't remove anything by itself).
Something like dpkg -l '*linux-image*' and then see which are installed (ii), and then do a dpkg remove <package name from above> on some, but don't remove the one you are running now, check uname -a to see.
Keep in mind this is all from memory, so might be wrong
Edit: now I see others replied as well with better ways
apt autoremove should do it