Ubuntu
apt package

dist-upgrade wants to remove current kernel and it's modules

Asked by Anders Paulsen

When running apt-get dist-upgrade on a fully upgraded Ubuntu Feisty installation, which has gutsy sources in /etc/apt/sources.list, apt-get is proposing to remove linux-image-2.6.17-11-386, and not upgrade it, or install a newer version. Why does this occur, and how can I work around it?

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Bhavani Shankar
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Anders Paulsen (anders-sce) said : 		#1

I tried installing linux-image-2.6.22-15-386 before doing a dist-upgrade, but dist-upgrade just wants to remove that as well, and not install a new kernel this time either.

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Bhavani Shankar (bhavi) said : 		#2

This is apt-get's normal behaviour - since the old kernel isn't in conflict with the new kernel, nothing gets removed. Normally, aptitude would actually remove the old kernel since it was automatically installed
by another virtual package and that package no longer depends on it.

There's a special config file in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/05aptitude that prevents that:

aptitude::Keep-Unused-Pattern "^linux-image.*$ | ^linux-restricted-modules.*$ | ^linux-ubuntu-modules.*$";

Regards

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Anders Paulsen (anders-sce) said : 		#3

Thank you for your answer! Last week I upgraded another server from feisty to gutsy, and didn't experience this, so before closing this question, I'd like to ask, why wasn't there a new kernel image to be installed when upgrading to gutsy? I'm kinda curious :)

Anders

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Best Bhavani Shankar (bhavi) said : 		#4

See if your kernel package is locked in synaptic package manager....

and reply back!....

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Anders Paulsen (anders-sce) said : 		#5

No, the package is not locked as far as I can see, but I discovered that the meta-package linux-image-386 wasn't installed. After I installed that, everything seemed fine. Thank you again for your help!

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Anders Paulsen (anders-sce) said : 		#6

Thanks Bhavani Shankar, that solved my question.