SUMMARY On installing kernel updates, plasma-discover marks them as manual, thereby preventing "apt autoremove" from discarding old ones and clogging up /boot, that outside of the discencryption is usually a tiny partition, holding only very few kernels at a time. STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. apply kernel update in plasma-discover 2. apt-mark showmanual 'linux-.*' OBSERVED RESULT multiple linux-* packages are marked manual. EXPECTED RESULT no additional linux-+ packages shall be marked manual, so "apt autoremove" can pick them up later. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04 KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0 Qt Version: 5.12.8 Kernel Version: 5.4.0-56-generic OS Type: 64-bit Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.40GHz Memory: 15,6 GiB ADDITIONAL INFORMATION also reported to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unattended-upgrades/+bug/1675079/comments/37
Sorry, I'm not very knowledgeable about packaging so could you clarify what you mean by "plasma-discover marks them as manual"? What does this mean? On my Neon machine, I can update Kernels using Discover and remove old ones using apt autoremove.
The apt-mark commandline shows: $ apt-mark showmanual 'linux-.*' linux-base linux-generic linux-headers-5.4.0-58 linux-headers-5.4.0-58-generic linux-image-5.4.0-58-generic linux-libc-dev linux-modules-5.4.0-58-generic linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-58-generic linux-sound-base syslinux-common syslinux-legacy I can "unmarked" manually e.g. the previous kernel with this command: $ apt-mark auto 'linux-*-5.4.0-56*' and list them: $ apt-mark showauto 'linux-.*' binutils-x86-64-linux-gnu liblinux-epoll-perl linux-firmware linux-headers-5.4.0-56 linux-headers-5.4.0-56-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-5.4.0-56-generic linux-image-generic linux-modules-5.4.0-56-generic linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-56-generic Now running: $ apt autoremove Will be able to clean them up. This bug is about every new kernel installed via the GUI-Update notifier of KDE/Plasma, will become marked manual again and thereby prohibited from being picked for apt autoremove. The tiny /boot partition fills up quickly and with the 4-th or 5-th kernel, updates through the GUI fail with random strange messages not giving hints to the space problem.
installed another update via commandline: sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade apt-mark showmanual 'linux-.*' linux-base linux-generic So the issue of this bug did not happen by "apt" alone ... But also some more packages were meanwhile removed from manual status (compared to the 11 entries in comment 2), not by apt but by me before running apt. Now I wait for the next kernel update to run via Discover again.
Hi, This is something that I assume apt implementation in PackageKit might be doing, so I'd recommend reporting here: https://github.com/hughsie/PackageKit/issues That said, I just checked my kubuntu machine and I had all my old kernels to be autoremoved. You could also consider reporting to the Kubuntu team who might have a better insight than I do of apt internals.
to document it here: Before and after applying the latest kernel-updates: root@Meerschweinchen:/home/holger# apt-mark showmanual 'linux-.*' linux-base linux-generic root@Meerschweinchen:/home/holger# apt-mark showmanual 'linux-.*' linux-base linux-generic linux-headers-5.4.0-64 linux-headers-5.4.0-64-generic linux-image-5.4.0-64-generic linux-modules-5.4.0-64-generic linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-64-generic root@Meerschweinchen:/home/holger#
reported to https://github.com/hughsie/PackageKit/issues/450
I'm also seeing this problem in Kubuntu 20.04. Kernel updates installed through the Discover UI (through "update all packages") are marked as manually installed and hence they are not manually purged by unattended-upgrades/apt autoremove as documented at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RemoveOldKernels I'll monitor the upstream bug report...