9/28/2021, 10:46:46 PM
I was running a system update when I ran into an odd error message that looked unfamiliar:
Error 24 : Write error : cannot write compressed block
E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 lz4 -9 -l 24
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.13.0-7614-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package linux-firmware (--configure):
installed linux-firmware package post-installation script subprocess returned e
rror exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
linux-firmware
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
My immediate go-to was apt -f install, but that returned the same error.
The issue is hinted at with this line: Error 24 : Write error : cannot write compressed block . Web searching revealed that this was due to the destination disk being full.
julian@razorback:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.4G 0 3.4G 0% /dev
tmpfs 690M 2.3M 687M 1% /run
/dev/mapper/data-root 224G 80G 134G 38% /
tmpfs 3.4G 11M 3.4G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 0 5.0M 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 3.4G 0 3.4G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/nvme0n1p1 467M 363M 69M 85% /boot <-- uh-oh
tmpfs 690M 20K 690M 1% /run/user/110
tmpfs 690M 32K 690M 1% /run/user/1000
With only 69mb, there wasn't enough free space in /boot to install the newer linux kernel.
Suggestions online recommend removing old kernel images. Find the kernel in use with uname -a, and list installed kernel images with dpkg -l | grep linux-image:
julian@razorback:~$ dpkg -l | grep linux-image
ii linux-image-5.11.0-7614-generic 5.11.0-7614.15~1622578982~20.04~383c0a9 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 5.11.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-5.11.0-7620-generic 5.11.0-7620.21~1626191760~20.04~55de9c3 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 5.11.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-5.13.0-7614-generic 5.13.0-7614.14~1631647151~20.04~930e87c amd64 Linux kernel image for version 5.13.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-generic 5.13.0.7614.14~1631647151~20.04~930e87c amd64 Generic Linux kernel image
Here, I have two superfluous images. apt remove --purge {image name} will remove the image from the system, and free up space in /boot.
If you are unable to remove the image via apt, go to /boot and move one of the larger files out. In my case, I moved /boot/initrd.img-5.11.0-7614-generic out of /boot and into ~, and the preceding apt commands then worked fine.