I had just done apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade when I saw something that made me cringe:

No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
Errors were encountered while processing:
initramfs-tools
plymouth
linux-image-3.2.0-38-generic-pae
ubuntu-minimal
plymouth-theme-ubuntu-text
linux-image-generic-pae
linux-generic-pae
mountall
upstart
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Well that’s not the exact error – I ended up seeing “disk out of space” among other issues. Basically the /root filled up and it broke my apt-get upgrade right in the middle of updates. No good.
So I go to /boot and clean up the older kernel files – just make sure you delete the “abi”, the “config”, the “initrd”, the “System.map”, the “vmcoreinfo”, the “vmlinuz” etc all with the same version number.

Then I went about reinstalling the packages. Unfortunately since some of the packages were already installed prior to running out of space, the dependencies were a little off.

apt-get install -f was no help:

You might want to run ‘apt-get -f install’ to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
initramfs-tools : Depends: initramfs-tools-bin (< 0.99ubuntu13.1~) but 0.99ubuntu13.1 is installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

And I didn’t want to have to restore this beast since the last full backup was over 2 months ago. So I had to carry on.

First I noticed that initramfs-tools needed the bin installed, but the bin was too new for initramfs-tools to utilize and therefore could not update even via –configure. Chicken and egg?

So then I looked up what versions were available so that I could downgrade:
apt-cache showpkg initramfs-tools-bin

Versions:
0.99ubuntu13.1 (/var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages) (/var/lib/dpkg/status)
Description Language:
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_main_binary-i386_Packages
MD5: 14e601bd8c0a0905d238d89be3036fa8
Description Language: en
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_main_i18n_Translation-en
MD5: 14e601bd8c0a0905d238d89be3036fa8

0.99ubuntu13 (/var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_main_binary-i386_Packages)
Description Language:
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_main_binary-i386_Packages
MD5: 14e601bd8c0a0905d238d89be3036fa8
Description Language: en
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_main_i18n_Translation-en
MD5: 14e601bd8c0a0905d238d89be3036fa8

Ok, so this was getting easier. All I have to do is install the older version. I had to look it up since it generally doesn’t happen too often:
apt-get install initramfs-tools-bin=0.99ubuntu13

The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
initramfs-tools-bin
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 downgraded, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

From there I run the following:
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get autoremove
apt-get autoclean
reboot

Profit.