The Purge Feature

published at 2024-02-13, updated at 2026-09-21, by José Luis Salvador Rufo.

Note: simplek8s-update has been replaced by nodectl and is being removed from the distribution. The equivalent command today is nodectl purge.

I am excited to announce the latest improvement to the simplek8s-update component.

Previously incomplete, the “purge” subcommand in simplek8s-update is now fully functional!

With this update, you can now clean up old releases from the boot partition based on either the usage space percentage or the desired number of releases to preserve.

Don’t forget to update the simplek8s-update command as follows:

$ simplek8s-update selfupdate

Downloading SHA256SUMS ...
Downloading simplek8s-update.latest.arm64 (2.5 MB) ...
10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Validating checksum (c862642da95e0400f41dc4daf723c4f52fd55f3ca43a1b3695bab58c260e2bc4) ...
Checksum is valid.
Saving as "/usr/local/bin/simplek8s-update" (2.5 MB) ...
10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%

The next command will remove old releases; by default, preserving the default kernel, 5 releases, and a maximum of 75% used space.

$ simplek8s-update purge

Mounting boot device ...
There are 4 installed releases. Preserving a least 5 ...
Device: /dev/disk/by-label/boot, size: 264.3 MB, used: 252.1 MB (95%).
Removed kernel "simplek8s.202308120612.arm64.efi".
Device: /dev/disk/by-label/boot, size: 264.3 MB, used: 191.2 MB (72%).
Unmounting boot device ...

The idea is to run simplek8s-update purge after upgrade.

Let’s continue making progress, one step at a time!