Installing new kernel causes error. Says it needs 2MB more space on the /boot filesystem

Ask Fedora
1

I’m trying to update my system through Discover on KDE. The update fails giving me the following error:

“Internal error:

Error running transaction: installing package kernel-core-6.16.8-200.fc42.x86_64 needs 2MB more space on the /boot filesystem”

I’ve looked at these posts: /boot nearly full - how to free space? even though 2 kernals are only insatalled , Kernel 5.7.11 not enough space in /boot

The first one recommended ls -lh /boot which gives:

Screenshot_20251004_081517
Screenshot_20251004_0815171856×723 201 KB

The second one recommended rpm -q kernel; df -h /boot; lsblk -o +FSTYPE,UUID | grep -e /boot which gives:

Screenshot_20251004_081714
Screenshot_20251004_0817141916×245 56.9 KB

I don’t know what either of these are really showing me, so any help diagnosing the issue is greatly appreciated.

2

It is a known issue, future versions of Fedora will likely install with 2GB boot partitions.

You can safely delete the oldest files in your /boot folder and try again.

Going forward, you may need to do this again, or expand your boot partition to fit new updates.

Also see Boot disk full

4

With the amount of kernel boot problems over the last six months, I’d go with the expansion if possible.

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5

Something happened in the last 8 days. Earlier today, I resized the boot partition to 2GB , regenerated grub config and initramfs and they are all 33MB now. I changed nothing to dracut config.

$ sudo ls -l /boot/ini*
-rw------- 1 root root 175968669  9 mai 12:14 initramfs-0-rescue-c9b852c1fd8c44b8aaa12d3e5c7a3992.img
-rw------- 1 root root  66331174 10 sep 09:21 initramfs-6.12.25-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  32652782 26 sep 08:11 initramfs-6.12.49-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  32657689  4 oct 05:45 initramfs-6.12.50-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  67492388 10 sep 09:23 initramfs-6.15.10-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  67524653 24 sep 08:26 initramfs-6.16.4-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  33207807  4 oct 05:45 initramfs-6.16.9-200.fc42.x86_64.img
$ sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Generating grub configuration file ...
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
done
$ sudo dracut -f --regenerate-all
$ sudo ls -l /boot/initramfs-*
-rw------- 1 root root 175968669  9 mai 12:14 /boot/initramfs-0-rescue-c9b852c1fd8c44b8aaa12d3e5c7a3992.img
-rw------- 1 root root  32653162  5 oct 11:01 /boot/initramfs-6.12.25-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  32656633  5 oct 11:02 /boot/initramfs-6.12.49-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  32656147  5 oct 11:02 /boot/initramfs-6.12.50-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  33226930  5 oct 11:03 /boot/initramfs-6.15.10-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  33209549  5 oct 11:03 /boot/initramfs-6.16.4-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw------- 1 root root  33209873  5 oct 11:03 /boot/initramfs-6.16.9-200.fc42.x86_64.img

my setup:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 465,76 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Disk model: CT500MX500SSD1  
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: B272B58D-59F9-4FCC-87BD-0C77B098C56C

Device       Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1     2048      4095      2048     1M BIOS boot
/dev/sda2     4096   4198399   4194304     2G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  4198400 976773119 972574720 463,8G Linux filesystem

A little history: They went from 90M to 64M then 33M. Weird!

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