Tumbleweed upgrade; need to preserve existing kernel

English Install/Boot/Login
1

So after 25+ years of nearly trouble-free Leap usage, I decided to switch one of my computers to Tumbleweed. It wasn’t a fresh install. I did a live upgrade from Leap to Tumbleweed (per instructions I found on the opensuse web site), so that may be a part of the issue.

I’ve done a few update cycles (always using ‘zypper dup’) and ran into a problem with my last update. It’s a laptop plugged in to a docking station. After the update, I booted into the new kernel and it didn’t recognize the docking station at all which means no network (I’m using wired network plugged into the docking station by default), no multiple monitors, etc.

I was able to reboot to the previous kernel and that works fine.

So I’m at a state where I have:

6.16.3 (works fine; this is what I’m running now)
6.16.5 (broken)

I’m now in a state where I’m not sure exactly sure how to do an update. Normally when I do an update, it keeps the previous version and installs a new version, but in this case, I want to preserve 6.16.3 (and I don’t care what happens to 6.16.5). Alternately, I can somehow fix 6.16.5 before I do an update.

So I’m looking for an answer to one (or both) of two questions:

  1. How can I repair the 6.16.5 kernel so it recognizes my docking station

or

  1. How can I ensure that my next upgrade preserves the 6.16.3 kernel so I can boot it in the case that the next version also has problems with my docking station.

Thanks

2

@speckle2345 Hi, you can configure /etc/zypp/zypp.conf to keep a specific kernel version or in /etc/zypp/multiversion.d which is probably a better place.

Why are you not at 6.16.7 which is the current kernel version?

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Are you sure you can repair this in the kernel? I would try to start a thread about the problem here on the forums first. And then the conclusion may be that a bug report is needed.

Lock the package with YaST > Software (or Myrlyn) or zypper.

4

malcolmlewis: I did the update (that installed 6.16.5) a while ago. I’m now thinking it’s time to do another update and wanted to make sure I don’t break my system.

5

hcvv: Thanks. I had thought about locking it, but I wanted to make sure that was the best solution. I’ll do that for sure before I do my next update.

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Also look @malcolmlewis suggestions. They might be better.

7

I will definitely look into them. I’m familiar with locking (and treat that as a pretty standard, though not frequent, operation). Less familiar with modifying zypp.conf, so I want to understand that a bit more before comitting to that.

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Not that big of a deal … here’s a couple of snippets in my /etc/zypp/zypp.conf:

## Valid values:
##	Comma separated list of packages.
##
## Default value:
##	empty
##
multiversion = provides:multiversion(kernel)
...
...  and now a few lines down ...
##
## Default: Do not delete any kernels if multiversion = provides:multiversion(kernel) is set
multiversion.kernels = latest,latest-1,6.4.0-150600.23.14,running
...

You will notice I have a specific kernel specified (…23.14). There was an issue a while back, and I knew THAT kernel was well behaved, so it’s still in the list of kernels to boot. And I’ll leave it there :slight_smile:

Those two entries (in zypp.conf) are all I had to modify to specify the kernels to hang on to for boot up.

9

Excellent. I’m definitely going to go with that. Thanks so much.

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