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I have a 20 GB boot drive yet I keep getting low mem notices - it uses 18 GB+. Is that correct? I see other posts that people have much smaller boot drives w/o problems. It usually only happens when I install new software. BTW, I'm running Ubuntu 18.04.

ls -sh
total 927M
4.0K bin       0 dev      0 initrd.img      4.0K lib32       4.0K media     0 proc   12K sbin  927M swapfile  4.0K usr         0 vmlinuz.old
4.0K boot    12K etc      0 initrd.img.old  4.0K lib64       4.0K mnt    4.0K root  4.0K snap     0 sys       4.0K var
4.0K cdrom  4.0K home  4.0K lib              16K lost+found  4.0K opt       0 run   4.0K srv   4.0K tmp          0 vmlinuz

df /boot
Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       20054232 17657208   1355260  93% /


du -hxd1 /boot
8.0M    /boot/grub
58M /boot


ls -sh /boot
total 50M
220K config-5.0.0-23-generic  4.0K grub    180K memtest86+.bin  184K memtest86+_multiboot.bin     8.4M vmlinuz-5.0.0-23-generic 4.0K efi
Mark Plotnick
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Lee
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  • You say I keep getting low mem notices. From what? Disk space and memory are different things... – Andy Dalton Aug 16 '20 at 01:02
  • Maybe wrong wording. The point my boot drive get low on disk space. Why, with that much size, is it getting full? I have one kernal installed. – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 01:08
  • 20 GB? Maybe start with checking what's on it - df /boot, du -hxd1 /boot, ls -sh /boot,etc. (Assuming your boot drive is mounted on /boot) – muru Aug 16 '20 at 01:12
  • df /boot Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 20054232 17657208 1355260 93% / 
    du -hxd1 /boot
8.0M /boot/grub
58M /boot

ls -sh /boot
total 50M
220K config-5.0.0-23-generic  4.0K grub    180K memtest86+.bin  184K memtest86+_multiboot.bin     8.4M vmlinuz-5.0.0-23-generic 4.0K efi
    – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 01:19
  • See also https://imgur.com/a/BURoi0S – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 01:20
  • A bunch of old kernels, perhaps? Some distros don't delete old kernels unless you tell them to, such as Ubuntu. sudo apt autoremove should take care of those - if that's indeed the issue. It'll also keep a copy of the previous kernel so that you have a fallback. – KGIII Aug 16 '20 at 01:21
  • No, I only have the one kernel so I don't know. A check of the disk shows the /boot drive is only using 59.9 MB. ??? – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 01:26
  • It's a bit drastic, but you can boot to a live instance (via USB), copy the data off (you can put it anywhere temporarily), format the partition, and put your files back. There's something definitely amiss, though I'd like to see the output of ls -sh entirely (by editing your post and using the code markup) just to make sure I see it completely. – KGIII Aug 16 '20 at 02:04
  • Yeah, that what I'm thinking. I added the code above. BTW, how much space should the boot drive have? – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 02:26
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    Something is amiss. You said /boot drive, but I see things like /Documents and /Downloads. Those should be on a different partition - if you have the normal /boot drive. Why is all that stuff on the /boot partition? – KGIII Aug 16 '20 at 02:59
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    Further: To be honest, you're better off backing up your data, wiping all your partitions, installing again, and restoring your backed up data. You have all your files on the /boot partition. If you want a simple/effective method, you can just let the installer use all the disk space and have a single partition. Modern Linux distros can do that just fine. – KGIII Aug 16 '20 at 03:02
  • I was wrong. I have re-entered the correct code above. My fault. – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 03:59
  • Q: Is this feasible? I want to move the /home to a separate drive. https://samwedge.uk/posts/mounting-linux-mint-home-directory-on-different-drive/ – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 03:59
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    You don't have a separate boot partition, at least not in the sense that /boot is on a separate partition. You have single root partition which contains everything. – muru Aug 16 '20 at 05:32
  • If moving /home, detailed instrucitons: To move /home uses rsync- Be sure to use parameters to preserve ownership & permissions https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving & https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2343317 – oldfred Aug 16 '20 at 18:05
  • It's not an external drive. It's internal. I thought my link above had some simple instructions, no? – Lee Aug 16 '20 at 18:10
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    Related: How to clean up unnecessary files – Mark Plotnick Aug 17 '20 at 17:34

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