[SOLVED] kernel 5-11-0-41?

[Teunis]

I haven't been here in a while, things work nicely

But I noticed in /boot there is a kernel 5-11-0-41 installed (date 12 Nov. 2021) yet only 5.11.0-40 is offered by grub.
Grub Customizer also shows 5-11-0-42 yet I can't find it in the repositories.
Is this something that is incomplete and/or was withdrawn or so?

[claydoh]

I betcha you have the 'pre-release updates' option (aka Ubuntu's focal-proposed pre-release testing repo) enabled via the Software Sources tool

Checking ---

Yup, this is coming from that repo, so most people are not seeing it (yet).

apt search 5.11.0-41 | grep installed

This will show which packages you have installed related to the -41 build, you could compare results to the -40 packages you have installed
Maybe you are missing needed bits, or possibly this is only for testers, and grub has not been triggered to rebuild the menus yet - testers at this stage would do so manually, perhaps? Or it is a pre-release bug preventing grub from updating the menus, as it normally would.

I don't see a -42 build. Maybe that one was pulled? The -41 is definitely in focal-proposed, and not the normal repos yet.
apt policy linux-image-5.11.0-42-generic may show some info, but only where it came from.

In the past I have found grub-customizer to be inaccurate on what it displayed as opposed to what was actually present, but that was some time ago. I don't trust it. But to verify, one can use a package manager and search for relevant names.


Another possibility - you have multiple Linux installs, and the grub you are booting Kubuntu from is actually from that other install, and not Kubuntu's grub, and has not been updated from within that OS yet, so isn't aware of the new kernel in the Kubuntu install yet.

[Teunis]

Indeed I have the pre-release repo enabled.
And I had a typo mentioning 0-42, it should read 0-41

Yes a package might be missing.

[claydoh]

I'd just disable focal-proposed (Pre-release updates) and remove any packages related to the -41, that kernel will arrive in the normal repos shortly anyway. Removing these now will prevent the very slight possibility of dependency errors when it does land there.

[Teunis]

I found the problem, a lack of free space on the root made a full install fail.
So I cleaned up the cache and after an fsck was able to continue the installation of all updates.
This might also have been the reason I could not install the iron64 browser.

[claydoh]

Could be, for sure.
Another trick for extra space (if you have not done so already) is to run sudo apt autoremove to uninstall any stray dependencies left over from application removals. This will also remove extra old kernel packages - it keeps at three most recent ones there, as well as at least one original 5.4 (if the install is older), as fallbacks.

[Teunis]

Indeed.
These days one has to run similar to keep unnecessary crud off the system.
I think I remember the updater would do this by itself.

Regretfully we are moving to things like discover, a project in development.

[claydoh]

Sometimes, the subsystem used to keep kernels to a certain level doesn't seem work correctly - and is separate from any GUI package manager. But with the HWE kernel stack in LTS, the max of 3 doesn't always hold (iirc it may be 3 of each major version, depending on the age of the install), and them not being trimmed is more a packaging configuration bug, not a package manager one. Sometimes new kernels are marked as "manually installed", and thus are not removed, even via a manual autoremove operation.

[Teunis]

Interesting observations.

I hardly ever use neon and noticed 6 kernels, 3 of the 5.4 kind, 3 of the more recent 5.11 kind.
I did install and use Muon but certain things only work via Discover, a real nuisance., think of the forced use of snap and flatpacks.