Easily remove old/unused PVE kernels on your Proxmox VE system (PVE Kernel Cleaner)

[Jordan_]

Hello everyone,

This is my public release of a tool I have developed to resolve an ongoing issue with old PVE kernels on Proxmox VE.

"Easily remove old/unused PVE kernels on your Proxmox VE system"

What is PVE Kernel Cleaner?
PVE Kernel Cleaner is a program to compliment Proxmox Virtual Environment which is an open-source server virtualization environment. PVE Kernel Cleaner allows you to purge old/unused kernels filling the /boot directory. As new kernels are released the older ones have to be manually removed frequently to make room for newer ones. This can become quite tedious and require extensive time spent monitoring the system when new kernels are released and when older ones need to be cleared out to make room. With this issue existing, PVE Kernel Cleaner was created to solve it.


Features

• Removes old PVE kernels from your system
• Ability to schedule PVE kernels to automatically be removed on a daily/weekly/monthly basis
• Run a simple pvekclean command for ease of access
• Support for the latest Proxmox versions and PVE kernels

Installing

To install PVE Kernel Cleaner head on over to the GitHub page at: https://github.com/jordanhillis/pvekclean

Please let me know what you think and if you run into any issues.

 

[Guillermo Ramirez]

Excellent job, it worked perfectly.
You saved me a lot of time and a lot of work

Thanks.

 

[peje]

thank you, very handy, had to run multiple times, had 57 old kernels!

 

[Jannoke]

Did not work on one of the boxes. Keeps looping around and not removing anything. Worked on my other nodes.

[*] Boot disk space used is critically full at 84% capacity (729M free)
[-] Searching for old PVE kernels on your system...
[*] "pve-kernel-5.3.18-3-pve" has been added to the kernel remove list
[-] PVE kernel search complete!
[!] Would you like to remove the 1 selected PVE kernels listed above? [y/N]:

root@electro:~# dpkg -l | grep pve-kernel
ii  pve-firmware                         3.1-3                           all          Binary firmware code for the pve-kernel
rc  pve-kernel-4.15                      5.4-17                          all          Latest Proxmox VE Kernel Image
ii  pve-kernel-5.3                       6.1-6                           all          Latest Proxmox VE Kernel Image
ii  pve-kernel-5.3.18-3-pve              5.3.18-3                        amd64        The Proxmox PVE Kernel Image
ii  pve-kernel-5.4                       6.2-7                           all          Latest Proxmox VE Kernel Image
ii  pve-kernel-5.4.65-1-pve              5.4.65-1                        amd64        The Proxmox PVE Kernel Image
ii  pve-kernel-helper                    6.2-7                           all          Function for various kernel maintenance tasks.

EDIT: it turned out problem with yum , but maybe it would be good idea to catch errors back from yum if problem occur instead of silently going forward.

 

[Jordan_]

Release Notes for Version 2.0.2​

I am thrilled to announce the release of PVE Kernel Cleaner 2.0! It's been over 5 years since the last update, and I greatly appreciate your patience, feature requests, and bug reports. Your feedback has been vital in enhancing the tool's capabilities. Here's what's new in this update:

• Enhanced Package Detection: Resolved issues with proxmox-kernel and pve-kernel package detection.
• Legacy Package Handling: Fixed a bug where legacy pve-kernel meta-packages were not being removed.
• Kernel Sorting Improvement: Corrected sorting issues to list kernels accurately from oldest to newest.
• Scheduler Functionality: Added an option to set the minimum number of kernels to keep in the scheduler function.
• New --keep/-k Option: Introduced the --keep (or -k) option to specify the minimum number of kernels you wish to keep on your system.
• New --remove-newer/-rn Option:Implemented the --remove-newer (or -rn) option to enable the removal of kernels that are newer than the current one, enhancing kernel management.
• New --dry-run/-d Mode: Added a --dry-run (or -d) mode for non-destructive testing, allowing safe program execution without affecting system kernels or making changes.
• Boot Directory Size Bug Fix: Addressed a bug with the detection of the /bootdirectory size, especially in LVM setups.
• Update Function: Added a new feature to update the program to the latest version directly from the command line. This can be disabled by setting the check_for_updates variable to false.
• Other Improvements: Various other bug fixes and enhancements have been made to improve performance and reliability.

Your continued support and feedback are what drive the improvement of PVE Kernel Cleaner.

https://github.com/jordanhillis/pvekclean/releases/tag/v2.0

Enjoy!

Jordan

 

[scyto]

thank you, exactly what i needed!!!

 

[alexsmartv]

Cool and nice still working perfect March 2025!

 

[kiwz]

Any idea why pve kernel cleaner not removing 6.8 and 6.8.12-9? It did remove about 8 others the first run.
Also not showing Boot Disk % full...
Running zfs and systemd:

root@g1:~# zfs list
NAME               USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
local-nvme         833G   966G   833G  /local-nvme
rpool             2.25G  42.8G   104K  /rpool
rpool/ROOT        2.21G  42.8G    96K  /rpool/ROOT
rpool/ROOT/pve-1  2.21G  42.8G  2.21G  /
rpool/data          96K  42.8G    96K  /rpool/data
rpool/var-lib-vz    96K  42.8G    96K  /var/lib/vz

 

[jcircle]

I think, others will correct if wrong, your % for boot is because /boot is not its own mount. It falls under /
I don't see an issue. The above screenshot (above yours) shows the system has /boot as its own mount point.