[GTALUG] Anyone else having issues with 6.9.12-1 kernel?

[Michael Galea]

On 2024-08-07 11:14, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 06, 2024 at 01:27:19PM -0400, Michael Galea wrote:
>> Thanks!  I'm mow on 6.10.3 unsigned from sid now, with new nvidia sources.
>> Everything running fine.  But I'm confused on two issues.
>> 1) It seems that debian has some sort of preference for signed over unsigned
>> kernels.
>> When I uninstalled a 6.9.12 unsigned kernel, it launched into installing a
>> 6.9.12 signed
>> kernel which I had around.
>> 2) My linux-image-amd64 package is status rc at 6.9.12-1. But upgrading it
>> wants to
>> uninstall linux-image-6.10.3-amd64-unsigned and install
>> linux-image-6.10.3-amd64!
> 
> Yes it explicitly depends on the normal (signed) package.  And the two
> kernel packages are listed as conflicting, so you either have the signed
> or the unsigned but not both.
> 
>> Is there some way to make debian prefer the unsigned kernel?
> 
> Well I just went and checked, and sure enough, all my installed kernels
> are signed.  I didn't know that, given I have never seen any messages
> about signing.  Maybe because my system is BIOS not UEFI?  All my machines
> are rather old by now.
> 
> I don't see any obvious way to install unsigned kernels automatically.
> The meta package for the kernel depends on the signed one.
> 

I found out my problem on the laptop and its not signed vs unsigned.
linux-image-6.10.3-amd64 installs a 44M initrd on my desktop and a
261M initrd on the laptop!
The desktop is ext4 on disk while the laptop is crypted data on mmc
flash memory. I'm guessing encryted fs doesn't compress so well.

So far Ive tried upping the compression level in intramfs-tools.conf but to
no avail, the initrd always is 261M.  That's a problem for me as the
standard debian crypt setup gave me only a 448M /boot and one kernel
uses 66% of it!


-- 
Michael Galea