apparently my problem is I cannot update initramfs:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 zstd: error 70 : Write error : cannot write block : No space left on device
After checking KDE Partition Manager for /boot and /boot/efi both have free space left:
/boot size: 488 MiB
/boot used: 396.26 MiB
/boot/efi size: 512 MiB
/boot/efi used: 10.52 MiB
dpkg -l | grep linux-image | awk '{print$2}'
shows:
linux-image-6.1.0-37-amd64
linux-image-6.1.0-38-amd64
linux-image-6.12.41+deb13-amd64
linux-image-amd64
I am now using debian 13 on linux-image-6.1.0-38-amd64 because linux-image-6.12.41+deb13-amd64 won’t load from grub2. I don’t want to get rid of linux-image-6.1.0-37-amd64 till I solve this issue
Related to this, there is a note in the release notes for upgrading to Debian 13: https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#ensure-boot-has-enough-free-space
It mentions an increase in the minimum requirements for /boot partition.
Checking the /boot size on my Fedora install, I partitioned out a gibibyte for the 3 kernel plus recovery kernel setup, which takes up about 338 MiB in total. Depending on out-of-tree kernel modules and bootloader modifications installed, your initramfs images could be larger. A few things to look for:
- the size of your current initramfs and vmlinuz image(s)
- any kernel modules you needed to install alongside your system (v4l2-loopback, nvidia, realtek, etc.)
- If there are other large files present in the boot partition
If everything there looks fine and/or is necessary, you might need to expand your /boot partition (either reinstall if new system or offline partition shrinking, moving after a data backup if you have personal files you care about).
I ran into a problem like this once, and after banging my head against the wall for days it turned out the solution was just running
sudo apt autoremove
That took care of removing a bunch of old stuff in the boot partition that I will not pretend to understand.
With the size of modern linux kernels, I think 1GiB for a /boot partition is the absolute minimum I would go for a current full-sized distributuon. You’ll run into these out-of-space issues on updates all the time otherwise.
Yep, infuriatingly installers often default to small
/boot
volumes, and if you want to change that value better say goodbye to automatic partitioning. Although, after trying to make the installer behave, giving up and manually formatting the drive, I finally got the push required to set up both encrypted root and encrypted/home
on separate drives.Currently I use an 8 GiB
/boot
, but I really think Debian installer should start making 2 GiB or even 4 GiB/boot
the default now. Dumb to have the installer shoot itself in the foot like this. Ubuntu still does the same thing for some reason, as if we don’t have room on the drives to fit a bit more futureproof/boot
there.