Recent upgrades to the Ubuntu 16.04 kernel (4.4.0-89 and -91) failed badly on my laptop. Happily, I've got the previous, working version still installed (4.4.0-57). For now I've got Grub configured to show me a menu, and I'm manually selecting -57 on boot, but this seems fragile, likely to break on a future sudo apt upgrade
.
I think I want:
- To remove -89 and -91, as they're not doing me any good.
- To make -57 the default for Grub, in a way that will persist through upgrades.
- To ensure the -57 stays installed, even if I install later kernel upgrade
- To be able to easily try later kernel updates, but revert back to -57 if it fails. My primary concern is -57 being automatically removed.
- If I find a functioning later update, an easy path to return to undo all of this and return to following kernel updates.
Trying to remove -91 with sudo apt remove linux-image-4.4.0-91-generic
requires me to remove linux-generic and linux-headers-generic. That seems Bad, so I haven't tried it.
I can find a variety of questions about the general problem, but none seem to address all of my goals, and most are old enough that I don't think they apply any more.
What's the best way to do this?
Addendum: This was flagged as a duplicate of How to prevent updating of a specific package? . That answer might address a portion of my question, but does not address the bigger picture.
Broadly, the issue is that the kernel is handled in an unusual way. It's installed via linux-generic, which is nothing but a dependency on linux-image-generic and linux-image-headers. Those in turn are only dependencies on linux-linux-image-VERSION-generic and headers-VERSION-generic, packages noteworthy for baking the version number into the package name (presumably to make it easy to install multiple in parallel).
Specifically not addressed in that answer are:
- Does not address how to remove -89 and -91.
- Does not address how to make -57 the default for Grub, even if I install later updates.
- Does not address how to ensure that -57 stays installed, even if I install later updates. Even if the answer is to hold one or more packages, given the several packages involved, which ones would I hold? If it's a matter of holding linux-generic, how do I downgrade it first?