I've encountered this with apt on ubuntu and yum on centos 7.   Coupled with many linux install guides stating you only need a few hundred Mb for the /boot partition, this is a minor disaster.   It's recoverable if you know what you're doing, but for someone who doesn't know which files in /boot can be removed by hand, it is a big problem.   Even removing old kernels, there's some sort of accretion after a several months of weekly kernel updates such that /boot will eventually get too full to install anymore updates without such a failure.   Even pared down to 1 kernel.Other than obviously making your /boot partition 500-1000Mb to give some breathing room, is there any way to prevent this?
Both apt and yum will try to install a kernel upgrade when there is not enough space, and fail, leaving the latest kernel unbootable
ubuntu;kernel;apt;yum