hard drive - How do I free up more space in /boot?

My /boot partition is nearly full and I get a warning every time I reboot my system. I already deleted old kernel packages (linux-headers...), actually I did that to install a newer kernel version that came with the automatic updates.

After installing that new version, the partition is nearly full again. So what else can I delete? Are there some other files associated to the old kernel images?

Here is a list of files that are on my /boot partition:

:~$ ls /boot/
abi-2.6.31-21-generic         lost+found
abi-2.6.32-25-generic         memtest86+.bin

abi-2.6.38-10-generic         memtest86+_multiboot.bin
abi-2.6.38-11-generic         System.map-2.6.31-21-generic
abi-2.6.38-12-generic         System.map-2.6.32-25-generic
abi-2.6.38-8-generic          System.map-2.6.38-10-generic
abi-3.0.0-12-generic          System.map-2.6.38-11-generic
abi-3.0.0-13-generic          System.map-2.6.38-12-generic
abi-3.0.0-14-generic          System.map-2.6.38-8-generic
boot                          System.map-3.0.0-12-generic
config-2.6.31-21-generic      System.map-3.0.0-13-generic
config-2.6.32-25-generic      System.map-3.0.0-14-generic

config-2.6.38-10-generic      vmcoreinfo-2.6.31-21-generic
config-2.6.38-11-generic      vmcoreinfo-2.6.32-25-generic
config-2.6.38-12-generic      vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-10-generic
config-2.6.38-8-generic       vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-11-generic
config-3.0.0-12-generic       vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-12-generic
config-3.0.0-13-generic       vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-8-generic
config-3.0.0-14-generic       vmcoreinfo-3.0.0-12-generic
extlinux                      vmcoreinfo-3.0.0-13-generic
grub                          vmcoreinfo-3.0.0-14-generic
initrd.img-2.6.31-21-generic  vmlinuz-2.6.31-21-generic

initrd.img-2.6.32-25-generic  vmlinuz-2.6.32-25-generic
initrd.img-2.6.38-10-generic  vmlinuz-2.6.38-10-generic
initrd.img-2.6.38-11-generic  vmlinuz-2.6.38-11-generic
initrd.img-2.6.38-12-generic  vmlinuz-2.6.38-12-generic
initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic   vmlinuz-2.6.38-8-generic
initrd.img-3.0.0-12-generic   vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-generic
initrd.img-3.0.0-13-generic   vmlinuz-3.0.0-13-generic
initrd.img-3.0.0-14-generic   vmlinuz-3.0.0-14-generic

Currently, I'm using the 3.0.0-14-generic kernel.

You've a lot unused kernels. Remove all but the last kernels with:

sudo apt-get purge linux-image-{3.0.0-12,2.6.3{1-21,2-25,8-{1[012],8}}}

This is shorthand for:

sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.0.0-12 linux-image-2.6.31-21 linux-image-2.6.32-25 linux-image-2.6.38-10 linux-image-2.6.38-11 linux-image-2.6.38-12 linux-image-2.6.38-8

Removing the linux-image-x.x.x-x package will also remove linux-image-x.x.x-x-generic.

The headers are installed into /usr/src and are used when building out-tree kernel modules (like the proprietary nvidia driver and virtualbox). Most users should remove these header packages if the matching kernel package (linux-image-*) is not installed.

To list all installed kernels, run:

dpkg -l linux-image-\* | grep ^ii

One command to show all kernels and headers that can be removed, excluding the current running kernel:

kernelver=$(uname -r | sed -r 's/-[a-z]+//')
dpkg -l linux-{image,headers}-"[0-9]*" | awk '/ii/{print $2}' | grep -ve $kernelver

It selects all packages named starting with linux-headers- or linux-image-, prints the package names for installed packages and then excludes the current loaded/running kernel (not necessarily the latest kernel!). This fits in the recommendation of testing a newer kernel before removing older, known-to-work kernels.

So, after upgrading kernels and rebooting to test it, you can remove all other kernels with:

sudo apt-get purge $(dpkg -l linux-{image,headers}-"[0-9]*" | awk '/ii/{print $2}' | grep -ve "$(uname -r | sed -r 's/-[a-z]+//')")