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
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
/bootvolumes, 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/homeon separate drives.Currently I use an 8 GiB
/boot, but I really think Debian installer should start making 2 GiB or even 4 GiB/bootthe 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/bootthere.