How to delete old kernel safely?

How can I delete old kernels safely? I have a long list of old kernels at boot up menu. I found a tutorial from website and I deleted them by un-checking through synaptic package manager, followed by update of grub. Old kernels have been removed but I got message "not found parent" at boot up. How to avoid this message. I am annoyed and I reinstalled many times.
I use
-ubuntu 9.10
-grub2

 

You can find out which kernel and header packages are installed by typing:

Code:

dpkg --get-selections |grep linux

Select which ones you want to remove and type:

Code:

sudo apt-get purge <insert package names here>

and you're away. Use the package names as reported by the first command; don't add the .deb extension.

 

Thanks for the pointers. I notice that generally (not always) I'm seeing pairs like this:

linux-headers-2.6.28-13
linux-headers-2.6.28-13-generic

Would the syntax be:

sudo apt-get purge linux-headers-2.6.28-13
sudo apt-get purge linux-headers-2.6.28-13-generic

OR are wildcards permitted:

sudo apt-get purge linux-headers-2.6.28-13*

I also assume that as part of removing unneeded kernels, one would remove or comment out appropriate lines in the 9.04 grub config file, /boot/grub/menu.lst (which I've already done). I understand that 9.10 uses grub2, which is managed differently. Are there any gotchas?

 

Answering my own question, I went to the Ubuntu community, and learned to use Synaptic. Search for "linux-generic" and then search for "linux-headers". Mark the packages to be removed, and let her rip, leaving at least one or two earlier versions "just in case." This freed up about .75 gig of disk space -- not too shabby.