On trying to upgrade to OpenSuse Linux 11.0, the CD tells me that my boot partition is too small at 45 Mbytes and suggests that 64 Mbytes is the minimum size. Is this a hard limit or can I do an upgrade with a smaller boot partition?
What are the consequences if I try to upgrade with the smaller boot partition and it turns out to be too small?
There’s no lower limit on the boot partition size, this is just a recommendation by the installer. An upgrade requires enough space for the old and new kernels. If you do not have enough free space, then the installation of the new kernel will not be successful and you will not be able to boot your new system.
45MB is normally enough. What may have happened is that you have a whole bunch of kernels, some of which you don’t use. You can pare them down to free up some space. Do a
ls -s /boot
and see how much space is used up.
And in future remember that, for modern motherboards and disks, a separate /boot partition isn’t needed.