Hadoop Uninstall : Shall I remove linux-image packages?

Question

I removed hadoop from my machine via apt-get remove --purge hadoop In the output I see the following packages were not removed :

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  avro-libs bigtop-jsvc bigtop-utils libjline-java liblog4j1.2-java
  libnetty-java libservlet2.5-java libslf4j-java libxerces2-java
  libxml-commons-external-java libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java
  libzookeeper-java libzookeeper-java-doc linux-headers-3.13.0-35
  linux-headers-3.13.0-35-generic linux-headers-3.13.0-36
  linux-headers-3.13.0-36-generic linux-headers-3.13.0-37
  linux-headers-3.13.0-37-generic linux-headers-3.13.0-39
  linux-headers-3.13.0-39-generic linux-headers-3.13.0-40
  linux-headers-3.13.0-40-generic linux-image-3.13.0-35-generic
  linux-image-3.13.0-36-generic linux-image-3.13.0-37-generic
  linux-image-3.13.0-39-generic linux-image-3.13.0-40-generic
  linux-image-extra-3.13.0-35-generic linux-image-extra-3.13.0-36-generic
  linux-image-extra-3.13.0-37-generic linux-image-extra-3.13.0-39-generic
  elinux-image-xtra-3.13.0-40-generic zookeeper
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.

I dont know what the linux-image packages do. So my questions are : Is it safe to run 'apt-get autoremove` and remove linux image packages ?

Does apt-get autoremove only remove the packages which are not referenced by any package and whose removal will not affect the server. ?

Answer 1

Those linux-image packages are obsolete kernel images that don't seem to be in use in your system anymore. It's safe to use apt-get autoremove to remove these.

apt-get autoremove will only remove the packages that were automatically installed and are no longer required. The removal of these packages should not affect your server.

For the record, the kernel images listed in your output are not related to hadoop. As you regularly update your server, installing newer kernel images, it's normal that obsolete images accumulate. The package manager doesn't remove them automatically in case you might want to roll back to an earlier version. but they are not required for the normal operations of your system.