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kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Unpackaged (hardcoded) kernel and bootloader on armhf

Hi,

are there any plans to address the issue of unpackaged (hardcoded) kernels and bootloaders on armhf? I can live with a hardcoded bootloader, but running an armhf machine in production without kernel security updates does not seem like a great idea to me. This problem (is) and was not there in Debian when Devuan was forked.

If the purpose was to extend the hardware support, it might be better to ship the armhf images with backports enabled and using a (packaged) kernel from backports instead of a completely unpackaged one.

I couldn't find the bits explaining why this change (to use unpackaged kernels on armhf) was conducted. Any pointers would be welcome.

yeti

Member

From: I'm not here: U R halucinating

Registered: 2017-02-23

Posts: 335  

Re: Unpackaged (hardcoded) kernel and bootloader on armhf

This definitely needs a solution suitable to endusers.

...and for lazy yetis... ;-)

I got packaged kernels on Cubietrucks by installing Debian9 first and uptrans(?)grading it to Devuan2. It would be nice not having to do it this way again. And I expect Debian and Devuan to diverge, so maybe this will not stay an option forever.

And please don't tell this to my Devuan-ish RPIs... I haven't looked at this problem for them yet.

Maybe someone already has done this?

Please chisel it into wikistone...

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*𝚛𝚒𝚋𝚋𝚒𝚝!*

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: Unpackaged (hardcoded) kernel and bootloader on armhf

I thought about this option as well, but how did you manage to get automatic updates for the Debian Kernels? Should be doable with some kind of apt pinning I suppose?

yeti

Member

From: I'm not here: U R halucinating

Registered: 2017-02-23

Posts: 335  

Re: Unpackaged (hardcoded) kernel and bootloader on armhf

The kernels are not blocked by Devuan and so they show up in Devuan's merged package index. I have neither added apt pinning commands nor sources.list lines directly pointing to Debian repositories.

It started as experiment and I expected to have to redo a clean Devuan install afterwards, but it just works and so I kept it.

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*𝚛𝚒𝚋𝚋𝚒𝚝!*

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: Unpackaged (hardcoded) kernel and bootloader on armhf

I see - that's interesting! Does this mean that I can also install the kernel and bootloader packages afterwards from packages when I do a "clean" Devuan installation without Debian and "transgrading"?

I didn't expect that since the kernel package does not show up on Devuan's pkginfo:

https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pk … ease=ascii

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: Unpackaged (hardcoded) kernel and bootloader on armhf

For those who are interested in this topic - I posted a tutorial for installing Devuan on ARM with packaged kernel:

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=15553#p15553