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kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

[Solved] Kernel package held back - why?

Hi,

I tried to install the unstable kernel on beowulf (not from backports) as follows:

cat <<'EOF'>>/etc/apt/sources.list.d/unstable.list
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged unstable main
EOF

cat <<'EOF'>>/etc/apt/preferences.d/99unstable
# Never prefer packages from unstable
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 1

# Allow upgrading kernel from unstable
Package: linux-image-arm64
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 500
EOF

apt update
apt dist-upgrade

This used to work fine in the past, but since the new kernel 5.7 is available in unstable it tells me that packages have been held back.

When I try to install the package "linux-image-arm64" manually, it tells me that it has an unmet dependency to linux-image-5.7.0-1-arm64 that is not going to be installed. Simply installing this dependency by hand resolves the issue. However, I would like to get automatic updates when new kernels become available as well, so this is not the right solution I guess.

Any ideas how to solve this better?

Last edited by kuleszdl (2020-07-04 15:22:50)

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: [Solved] Kernel package held back - why?

Use this in /etc/apt/preferences.d/99unstable:

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 100

^ That treats unstable just like backports so that packages explicitly installed from there will be kept updated.

---

Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: [Solved] Kernel package held back - why?

Thank you! But I will have to install the package from unstable once for this to work, i.e. just running the dist-upgrade will not work, right?

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: [Solved] Kernel package held back - why?

Yes, that's right:

# apt update
# apt install -t unstable linux-image-arm64

EDIT: update the database before installing.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2020-07-04 15:09:18)

---

Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: [Solved] Kernel package held back - why?

This seems to do the trick - thank you a lot!