Latest apt upgrade: Not enough space in /boot

Troubleshooting
1

Hi.

Just ran apt upgrade on my RPi 3 Model B and got these lines at the end of the process:

Setting up raspberrypi-bootloader (1:1.20220830-1) ...
You do not have enough space in /boot to install this package.
Skipping Pi 4 support
Removing 'diversion of /boot/start.elf to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/start.elf by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/start_cd.elf to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/start_cd.elf by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/start_db.elf to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/start_db.elf by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/start_x.elf to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/start_x.elf by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/fixup.dat to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/fixup.dat by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/fixup_cd.dat to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/fixup_cd.dat by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/fixup_db.dat to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/fixup_db.dat by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/fixup_x.dat to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/fixup_x.dat by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/bootcode.bin to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/bootcode.bin by rpikernelhack'
Removing 'diversion of /boot/LICENCE.broadcom to /usr/share/rpikernelhack/LICENCE.broadcom by rpikernelhack'
root@DietPi:~#

Do I need to be concerned about not having enough space in /boot to install this package? I don’t even know what I could delete from that directory to free up space…

Thanks.

2

Can you share

df -h

And I recommend not to reboot your system

3

Thanks for the reply. Oops. I already rebooted. Here’s the df -h output. Thanks for taking a look.

root@DietPi:~# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        30G  5.3G   24G  19% /
devtmpfs        454M     0  454M   0% /dev
tmpfs           487M  4.0K  487M   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           195M  5.4M  190M   3% /run
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs          1023M     0 1023M   0% /tmp
tmpfs            50M  192K   50M   1% /var/log
/dev/mmcblk0p1   42M   29M   13M  70% /boot
/dev/sda1       1.8T  802G  1.1T  44% /mnt/media
4

Yours just only 42MB.
In comparison the boot drive on my RPi 3b+:

Filesystem      Size     Used  Avail  Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       127M     32M   95M   26%   /boot

Did you upgrade from pre-buster?

1 Like
5

Uhh that’s indeed quite a small boot directory. You could try to use a tool like Gparted and boot a different computer into the Live CD. Try to attach your AD card and resize boot partition to 150MB

1 Like
6

In the last couple weeks, yes, I upgraded to Buster and then to Bullseye.

7

Found this link. I do have another RPi sitting around here, somewhere… Sounds like a good project for a long weekend? :scream:

8

Yea that is what I meant, the boot partition size changed when introducing debian buster.

Sure you can use the other RPi, if you have a SD to USB adapter. Nevermind, if you boot via USB.
But I think both variants (Use the other Pi or use a live ISO like https://gparted.org/liveusb.php) shouldn’t take a whole weekend. MAybe around two hours, even for an unexperienced user.

1 Like
9

Thanks a lot for the reply. As I look at this other RPi, it has the same specs as my current prod machine, down to the SD card. Now I’m wondering if I just don’t do a clean Bullseye install on that and make it my prod machine. All I really need is sab, sonarr, and radarr, anyway. Decisions, decisions.

1 Like
10

I guess the original image used was pretty old. Maybe the system was already running for years. Our current images have a way bigger boot partition but this we changed years back. Have a look to follow blog post, it might give an idea one how to adjust the file system size Running DietPi from an USB stick or an onboard eMMC

Btw the file system size is nothing that is going to change on a Destro Upgrade. It’s part of the image you used to install the system first time.

1 Like
11

Things went surprisingly well today. I’m up and running on the new production pi with sonarr radarr and sabnzbd and a nice big boot partition. I’m just stuck now on accessing my media drive mounted on the Pi from Kodi (all on the same local network). First hurdle seems to be that I don’t have an /etc/exports file? On the “old” RPi, the video source on the Kodi side looked like:

nfs://blahblahblah/mnt/media/shows/

Do I need to manually install the NFS server on the “new” RPi?

Thanks!

12

Yes, you can install it with dietpi-software install 109.

1 Like
13

Wait, who is mounting what from whom? Is the new Pi client or server?

14

Sorry, @Joulinar , I got it sorted. Connected my USB media drive to the RPi and then just connected to those mounts on the RPi from Kodi. All’s working fine.

15

Ok great, could you make one of our answers as solution?

1 Like
16

Thanks for the thread. It has saved me from diving deeper. I too have a small /boot partition and getting that warning. I guess there will be a lot of us like this who are running old PI-Holes based on DietPI and old instructions. My daily computers are Windoze, so no linux machines around to do the gparted stuff on.

A simple question - can I do a dietpi-backup to a memory stick, grab a new SD Card and add a fresh DietPI install to it, boot with that, and then restore the backup?

I only have a very low use PI. Only running PI-Hole and Wireshark. So it is just as easy for me to just do a fresh install. Running though a disaster recovery type fix I think would be useful here, and may help give others an alternate route who may be scared by GParted?

A second question - when running the update to v8.8 I did say yes to the backup - where was that put? It could save me a step :slight_smile:

17

Yes, this should be possible as we just save the file/folders and not the partition layout. Theoretically you could even restore the backup during the initial boot right away. Just activate the correct option in dietpi.txt and have the USB backup stick attached already

# Restore a DietPi-Backup on first boot: 0 => disable | 1 => interactive restore (show list of found backups) | 2 => non-interactive restore (restore first found backup)
# - Simply attach the drive/disk/stick with contains the backup. All attached drives will be mounted temporarily and searched automatically.
AUTO_SETUP_BACKUP_RESTORE=0

just open dietpi-backup, it should display the location

1 Like
18

I like the sound of that. Sounds nice and simple. Thanks @Joulinar . Will give it a go and report back.

19

Kinda makes you wonder why they didn’t start with a 256 boot partition in the first place. :slight_smile:

20

the size of the boot partition has been changed over time, depending on the RPi OS version used. As the kernel size has been growing, the boot partition was enlarged. Actual size of 128MB is fully enough to host currend RPi kernel

1 Like