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Question about kernel updates

I've set up my interceptor with the Axzez OS, its been running very fine for a couple of months now. I'm only using the WAN ethernet port of the Axzez board.

The setup is such that the main OS is on an SSD (/dev/sda) and a RAID1 running on /dev/sdb & /dev/sdc does hold the main (its a NAS).

My understanding is that the Raspberry CM4 cannot boot directly from SATA and the actual boot partition is still on the eMMC of the CM4 board. That would explain the difference in active kernel vs what the OS attempts to install in /boot on /dev/sda1.

Running lsblk on the OS shows me various partitions on what I believe to be the eMMC, only one of them is mounted:

mmcblk0      179:0    0  14.6G  0 disk
├─mmcblk0p1  179:1    0   100M  0 part
├─mmcblk0p2  179:2    0   352M  0 part  /squashfs
└─mmcblk0p3  179:3    0  14.1G  0 part
mmcblk0boot0 179:32   0     4M  1 disk
mmcblk0boot1 179:64   0     4M  1 disk

By now, the main kernel versions have marched on to version 5.15.84-something but the Axzez OS is still on 5.15.32. Am I missing something? My unattended-upgrades keep finding new (mainline) kernels and install them in /boot on /dev/sda1 but the system keeps booting kernel 5.15.32 - naturally.

Now, I'd really like to run more recent kernels to stay up to date security wise.

- maybe I'm simply missing an update channel to have more recent kernels pulled from Axzez, but given that the kernel patch in the download section is still 5.15.32 I doubt a more recent kernel exists?

- what would be a safe way to change the eMMC boot partition back to a mainline kernel and is that even possible while keeping the main system as-is? As mentioned above, I only use the WAN port on the board so my assumption is that a mainline kernel would still recognize that. Are there other differences between mainline and the axzez-patched kernel?

Maybe there are other alternatives I'm not aware of, I'd be curious to learn about.

Thanks

6 comments

6 Comments

Axzez Support

Jan 26, 2023

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We released an updated OS today that includes the latest firmware and kernel being used by Raspberry Pi. It also includes a fix for a driver reporting half-duplex for PoE ports even when they are full-duplex. (see https://www.axzez.com/forum/main/comment/fccb0f68-5d43-4dfc-9927-0bc20db42131?postId=62632d56ed3c900016ce90d2). The new kernel is based on 5.15.84 and the firmware is the latest released RaspberryPi firmware 1.20230106 (only updated if boot order is not what we expect). Downloads here: https://www.axzez.com/software-downloads

Hannes

Jan 31, 2023

Replying to

IMO it would make sense if you provided the kernel updates also as deb packages. Is this something that you have on your roadmap?

Axzez Support

Jan 13, 2023

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@Dominique Stender, the instructions you are looking for are here: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/linux_kernel.html Just download our patch to include it in the build. https://www.axzez.com/software-downloads

Dominique Stender

Jan 18, 2023

Replying to

Thanks for the reply. for some reason I didn't see it earlier.

The article describes how to manually compile the kernel. I guess that is fine, assuming that your kernel patch is upwards compatible for future debian kernels. But how do I get the kernel onto the eMMC? Will simply mounting the partition and replacing the file do? As far as I can tell the raspberrypi.com article doesn't contain any information specific to the CM4

From your answer I implicitly hear that there will not be Axzez-built OS kernels on a regular basis?

The other part of my original question: Since I'm using only the WAN port of the Axzez board, would a vanilla Debian kernel work?

Thanks again!

Axzez Support

Jan 18, 2023

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Replying to

The instructions (minus the mount) are actually on that page, more specifically here: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/linux_kernel.html#building-the-kernel

The kernel patch we provide is upward compatible at least up to 5.15.61 (I checked back in September). Allowing for a "fuzz" factor may be necessary the further away from 5.15.32 you get.

Yes, once you build the kernel8.img, you need to:

sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot/
cp kernel8.img /boot/

We do not mount that by default.

You need to also copy any updated modules to /lib/modules. Most likely overlays did not change unless you specifically selected this.

We do plan to create an updated OS image soon to fix a customer discovered bug with PoE port duplex status, which will include a new patch file. We'll probably use the version in the latest Raspberry Pi kernel 1.20230106, which used Linux kernel 5.15.84. Since we are not making regular OS changes, we haven't had a need to rebuild the OS on a regular basis. We can definitely consider regular builds, but it would require additional testing on our end, which we don't have the resources for at this time.

We've talked about using other operating systems elsewhere in the forum. We know that some OMV people are using the OMV image (is that Ubuntu based?) instead of our OS + the OMV deb. They didn't have a need for the ethernet switch and were just using the WAN as you are proposing.

Axzez Support

Jan 09, 2023

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Hello @Dominique Stender. Thanks for your post. Good questions!

I'm going to talk with our team about this and get back to you. We should definitely document this.

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Question about kernel updates

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