Hi! I just ran dnf update and once it was done I got a notification saying that only 37 MB remain in the boot partition, which seems… worrying? It’s fine now, but I’m concerned about consequences in future updates. I think I allocated 1 GB to my boot partition, which I thought would be more than enough given I saw people saying that 500 MB was usually enough.
Is this cause for concern?
I have 5 kernels my boot partition and Combined, everything consumes 601MB. I have a 1GB boot partition.
Post the output of sudo du -h /boot and sudo tree -f /boot and we’ll see what you have, how large it is and where all the space is going.
Are you using the nvidia rpmfusion drivers and if so, do you have any need to ever use the nouveau drivers? You can save a great deal of space by ditching it.
Here you go!
sudo du -h /boot:
| 2,3M | /boot/grub2/fonts |
|---|---|
| 2,4M | /boot/grub2 |
| 16K | /boot/lost+found |
| 20K | /boot/loader/entries |
| 24K | /boot/loader |
| 2,0M | /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT |
| 19M | /boot/efi/EFI/fedora |
| 21M | /boot/efi/EFI |
| 8,0K | /boot/efi/System/Library/CoreServices |
| 12K | /boot/efi/System/Library |
| 16K | /boot/efi/System |
| 21M | /boot/efi |
| 842M | /boot |
sudo tree -f /boot:
/boot
├── /boot/config-6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64
├── /boot/config-7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64
├── /boot/config-7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64
├── /boot/efi
│ ├── /boot/efi/EFI
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT
│ │ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTIA32.EFI
│ │ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI
│ │ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/fbia32.efi
│ │ │ └── /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/fbx64.efi
│ │ └── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/BOOTIA32.CSV
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/BOOTX64.CSV
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/gcdia32.efi
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/gcdx64.efi
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubia32.efi
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grubx64.efi
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/mmia32.efi
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/mmx64.efi
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shim.efi
│ │ ├── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shimia32.efi
│ │ └── /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/shimx64.efi
│ ├── /boot/efi/mach_kernel
│ └── /boot/efi/System
│ └── /boot/efi/System/Library
│ └── /boot/efi/System/Library/CoreServices
│ └── /boot/efi/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist
├── /boot/grub2
│ ├── /boot/grub2/earlyboot.cfg
│ ├── /boot/grub2/fonts
│ │ └── /boot/grub2/fonts/unicode.pf2
│ ├── /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
│ └── /boot/grub2/grubenv
├── /boot/initramfs-0-rescue-d0fdf0f495cb4d05a65a2f82942fa6a3.img
├── /boot/initramfs-6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64.img
├── /boot/initramfs-7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64.img
├── /boot/initramfs-7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64.img
├── /boot/loader
│ └── /boot/loader/entries
│ ├── /boot/loader/entries/d0fdf0f495cb4d05a65a2f82942fa6a3-0-rescue.conf
│ ├── /boot/loader/entries/d0fdf0f495cb4d05a65a2f82942fa6a3-6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64.conf
│ ├── /boot/loader/entries/d0fdf0f495cb4d05a65a2f82942fa6a3-7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64.conf
│ └── /boot/loader/entries/d0fdf0f495cb4d05a65a2f82942fa6a3-7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64.conf
├── /boot/lost+found
├── /boot/symvers-6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64.xz → /lib/modules/6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64/symvers.xz
├── /boot/symvers-7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64.xz → /lib/modules/7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64/symvers.xz
├── /boot/symvers-7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64.xz → /lib/modules/7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64/symvers.xz
├── /boot/System.map-6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64
├── /boot/System.map-7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64
├── /boot/System.map-7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64
├── /boot/vmlinuz-0-rescue-d0fdf0f495cb4d05a65a2f82942fa6a3
├── /boot/vmlinuz-6.19.10-300.fc44.x86_64
├── /boot/vmlinuz-7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64
└── /boot/vmlinuz-7.1.6-201.fc44.x86_64
13 directories, 43 files
I installed the rpmfusion package, yes. It’s the first time I hear about the nouveau drivers, so I’m guessing the answer to that is no.
The default in the installer (since Fedora 43) is 2 GB, since Nvidia users started to find that the previous standard 1 GB was running out.
Non-Nvidia users are probably still ok with 1 GB.
The default had been raised from 500 MB to 1 GB in 2016.
Ah, damn. I installed as a partition (I still need Windows for a couple of things) and the default settings didn’t work for some reason so I had to manually create the partitions.
Looks like everyhting is quite normal size-wise. You don’t have any ancient cruft lying around so I assume the vast majority of the space is consumed with the rescue kernel, which I never bother with and the fact that your kernels are quite large due to including the nouveau drivers.
You have 2 options.
Hi Sparky,
If you are runing the Nvidia drivers, not nouveau, you’ll notice that each kernel (vmlinuz-{version} takes about 18MB and the initramfs-{same_version} takes about 159MB) and if you are also installing the rescue kernel, it takes even more space due to including all of the common drivers needed on most systems (pretty sizable).
I have been putting up with this same thing for a while. What I do is limit the number of installed kernels to 3 (default on most systems) and removing the rescue kernel, which is generally useless unless the normal kernels are booting with issues or you have to move the boot drive to another machine that has different HW installed. This usually leaves me with about 336MB in /boot. I was considering setting the number of kernels to keep to 2 but, haven’t really considered the need to be urgent … for now 
3 kernels + rescue seems to be what I have too based on the terminal output (although I’m not very familiar with this so… not fully sure).
I’ll look into resizing the boot partition. I’m just a bit wary of playing with that part of my system if I can avoid it.
Fair enough - it’s quite straightforward to set up a custom dracut configuration to omit drivers you don’t need. Then again, it’s also relatively easy to resize a partition too.
… yup, the default… the problem with just having 37MB of free space in /boot will come when there is a future kernel update. There will not be enough free space to install it and then things go sideways… so, the “easy” fix is to just remove the rescue kernel after each kernel update AFTER a successful reboot using the new kernel. To remove the rescue kernel each time, you sudo rm -f /boot/*rescue*. ( I’m pretty lazy so, this is what I do :-))
Yes, it is safe
… IF you have some free space left on the disk …
Well, if you don’t, you don’t have a choice.
… just poking a little fun at you Steve
I’m married - I get that on a constant basis, daily!
… Yup, me too … LOL … so, I figure I’d pay it forward and share the love I get from my wife … LOL!!!
Is there a reason to keep previous kernels that are not rescue? Again, not an expert here. But if I’m running the latest kernel (7.1.6), what do I need 7.1.5 and 6.19.10 for?
… it is “generally” a good idea to keep at least 1 previous known good working kernel just in case a new kernel update blows something up … you have a way to recover …
If there’s an issue with 7.1.6 (as there currently is for AMD 9070 users it seems, for example) then you can boot with the previous kernel and get around the regression.
The rescue kernel is often utterly useless, as by the time you need the thing, it’s so old that it doesn’t work. This is why I blow Rescue away and keep (admittedly, probably too many) five previous kernels.
Say you were one of the AMD GPU users affected by graphics issues in 7.1.6. Then it would be useful to have the previous kernel to boot into.
You’re probably ok with 2 rather than 3, if you’re careful to satisfy yourself that the “latest” kernel is working before updating again.