Published on :Mar 19, 2016
Why would anyone want to do that?
Well I now have a reason, My laptop running Ubuntu 14.04 suddenly started crashing. On 15th March it crashed more than 10 times.
I tried to figure out what had happened to my normally functioning machine all of a sudden. I had installed regular update early in the morning that day. Turns out that, I had updated my kernel to 3.13.0-83. That was only software installed that day, and if my laptop was crashing for software reasons there was only one possible culprit!
Thus I rebooted my machine, and selected older kernel version from my grub menu to start ubuntu. It worked normally.
Now I was sure my new linux kernel was giving all the problems, I had to uninstall it. Here is how I did that:
Step 1: List all the kernels installed in the system
$ dpkg --list | grep linux-image
ii linux-image-3.13.0-24-generic 3.13.0-24.47 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 3.13.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-3.13.0-83-generic 3.13.0-83.127 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 3.13.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
rc linux-image-4.4.0-13-generic 4.4.0-13.29~14.04.1 amd64 Linux kernel image for version 4.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-extra-3.13.0-24-generic 3.13.0-24.47 amd64 Linux kernel extra modules for version 3.13.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-extra-3.13.0-83-generic 3.13.0-83.127 amd64 Linux kernel extra modules for version 3.13.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
ii linux-image-generic 3.13.0.83.89 amd64 Generic Linux kernel image
Step 2: Remove kernel you don't want anymore
I removed buggy kernel version 3.13.0-83.
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.13.0-83-generic
Here is the output I could see in my screen when I removed my kernel:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
kde-l10n-engb libechonest2.1 libqtweetlib1.0
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
linux-generic* linux-image-3.13.0-83-generic*
linux-image-extra-3.13.0-83-generic* linux-image-generic*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 4 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 195 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
(Reading database ... 207828 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing linux-generic (3.13.0.83.89) ...
Removing linux-image-generic (3.13.0.83.89) ...
Removing linux-image-extra-3.13.0-83-generic (3.13.0-83.127) ...
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-83-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/pm-utils 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/update-notifier 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-83-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done
Purging configuration files for linux-image-extra-3.13.0-83-generic (3.13.0-83.127) ...
Removing linux-image-3.13.0-83-generic (3.13.0-83.127) ...
Examining /etc/kernel/postrm.d .
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs-tools 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
update-initramfs: Deleting /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-83-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/zz-update-grub 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done
The link /vmlinuz is a damaged link
Removing symbolic link vmlinuz
you may need to re-run your boot loader[grub]
The link /initrd.img is a damaged link
Removing symbolic link initrd.img
you may need to re-run your boot loader[grub]
Purging configuration files for linux-image-3.13.0-83-generic (3.13.0-83.127) ...
Examining /etc/kernel/postrm.d .
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs-tools 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postrm.d/zz-update-grub 3.13.0-83-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-83-generic
Step 3: restart your system
sudo reboot