Ubuntu Linux (20.04) kernel upgrades constrained by /boot size

[malakoffee]

It's got a 30Gb SSD as storage - the boot partition was set to 240 Mbytes by the default Ubuntu installation ( maybe 5 years ago ).

The recent kernel upgrades have been blocked by lack of free space in /boot - requiring 130Mbytes free space to proceed.

Thus, I have been following various suggestions to free up space in /boot - by deleting previous, abandoned, kernel version components.

This time I cannot resolve it using prescribed methods.

It may now be time to buy a new SSD - 120 Gb perhaps and to explicitly configure a much larger /boot partition.

The current(old) SSD is connected to the MoBo by SATA2 . . . . which is probably ancient history by now.

Hopefully a new "SATA3" SSD will be backwards compatible ??

- Buy the SSD
- Use gparted to manually configure
- Clone the old SSD onto the new SSD
. . . . . . what could possibly go wrong ?? . . . . .

[JohnB]

Be aware that UEFI may confuse things over what you are used to. It replaces the good old MBR (master boot record), and really needs a clean disk to do its stuff on

[GrahamPlatt]

What prescribed methods are you using. Synaptic should do this.
And if you clone the old drive to the new, you'll end up with the same sized boot partition

[malakoffee]

Thanks . .

It sounds safer to get the new SSD and do a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04.1 - manually configuring the partitions at install time.

Then transfer my User Data over once the new SSD is up and running.

UEFI - Thanks, I'm aware of this complication, but otherwise very wary of touching anything to do with it.

Previous attempts to remove redundant component in /boot ( & associated other actions ) :-

- sudo apt autoremove
- initramfs.conf - set COMPRESS=xy
- sudo -apt get purge {linux-image . . (non-current-versions) } <<< often feeding params from grep or whatever

- synaptic
I'm running 5.4.0.53 now, there are still a couple of 52 kernel components visible :-
linux-modules-5.4.0.52-generic . . . . . . with the 53 component also present
linux-image-unsigned-5.4.0.52-generic . . . . . . with NO 53 component present !!

i'm very wary of deleting those as I don't whether 53 can use the older 52 components.

[JohnB]

When I battled too small a partition for /, I used symlinks, but it was a constant struggle. For my Mint 20 done this month, I have on a 120Gb SSD: 500Mb EFI partition, 40Gb partition for /, 20Gb for swap. I keep /home/john on a separate disk (I used to keep just parts of it, and symlink them in, but . files in it get very big, so it seemed best to keep the whole thing separate.

[Infrasonic]

...Hopefully a new "SATA3" SSD will be backwards compatible ??...

Should be fine.
SATA/PCIe/USB et al are all designed to be backwards compatible, as long as there aren't any MB/Chipset oddities.
Might be worth doing a search first to see if there's any known issues there with your MB model number.