Beginner "mistakes" with swapping kernels, need some advice

October 17, 2022

I don't know how to explain this, so I start with my hardware: Two Odroid HC1. I love swapping Kernels, default was 5.4.199 but that was "too old" because I like it bleeding edge. Did upgrade both to 5.17.5 and it works like a charm! Really good performance and some errors from dmesg disappeared too! However the problems did not wait for long: Kernel 5.19.x broke fstrim commands on my SATA drives so I rolled back, everything was good on 5.17.5 again. My logs showed TRIM was supported and running again, cheers!

Now to the actual problem at hand and this might be my own doing. I froze the upgrades in armbian-config. Thinking this would prevent upgrading to the new kernel (with the fstrim issues). It did however upgrade again and made both odroids unbootable. After very frustrating loopback device shenanigans with micro sdcard images I had my important data back again. Rolled to some old backups and lost nothing, made new backups and I am happy, though stuck on an "outdated" system as i am not installing updates anymore until I have realized my mistake.

A few questions:

1) was freezing the mistake?

2) why is fstrim "broken" on SATA drives in 5.19.x?

3) how to prevent kernel upgrades permanently?

4) will switching to 5.4.x keep me on that branch safely, provided if I take the downgrade pill?

What is the best course of action here? How can I force to stay on specific kernel branches and only get security patches? My main goal is working fstrim and being actually able to boot

Greetings

Edited October 17, 2022 by garak

October 22, 2022

A downgrade and using the recommended kernel 5.4.218 works without major issues. Some small hidepid "errors" in dmesg, but these also happen with the stock image from this site. A quick google search reveals it is a non-issue. My advice for other beginners would be staying on the kernel branches 5.4.x for as long as the board maintainer recommends these. My reasoning was since there was also a download offered for 5.19.x that I would be free to use either. It would appear that downgrading also keeps me in the old branch that runs very stable.

Edit:

https://www.kernel.org/category/releases.html

LTS kernels are usually a good choice.

Edited October 22, 2022 by garak
clarify