Problem Description:
Trying to understand why the new kernel version isn’t boot and where to look for problems that occur during that process.
Relevant System Information:
This is a Raspi 4 B Rev 1.2 with ubuntu server installed on it.
Screenshots or Error Messages:
This message never changes, even after reboots
Pending kernel upgrade!
Running kernel version:
6.17.0-1006-raspi
Diagnostics:
The currently running kernel version is not the expected kernel version 6.17.0-1011-raspi.
Restarting the system to load the new kernel will not be handled automatically, so you should consider rebooting.
What I’ve Tried:
I’ve looked in raspi community, used ai to troubleshoot. I can’t find any information specific to diagnosing this issue.
Does this Raspberry Pi with Ubuntu server installed on it load to a command
line interface? How long have you had this installation? Do you know how to update/upgrade the operating system?
I think that you need to update/upgrade the system and then reboot. That is what I think that the messages mean.
I’ve had it for several years and have been upgrading it as I go along.
This message only started recently.
I actually have the newer kernel on the machine, but for some reason it doesn’t boot to it.
I learned recently that it uses uboot to boot the kernel, but I haven’t found any good information yet to narrow down the reason why it isn’t booting the newly installed kernel.
I may have to connect to the console to see what is actually happening or even be able to drop into a uboot console to mess around with some of the commands I have found.
It would be great if someone could confirm this so I quit wasting my time trying to do it without a console.
Typical issue on Pi with Ubuntu. This usually happens because the flash-kernel utility didn’t trigger correctly, or your /boot/firmware partition wasn’t mounted during the last apt upgrade.
The “Pending” message comes from needrestart, which sees a newer kernel in /boot but notices the currently loaded one (the one the Pi actually found at startup) is still the old one.
Try this to sync them manually:
1. First, make sure your boot partition is actually mounted: mount | grep /boot/firmware
2. If it’s there, force a refresh of the boot files:
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo flash-kernel
3. If flash-kernel gives an error about “Unsupported platform”, you might need to check if your /etc/flash-kernel/dbor/proc/device-tree/model is reporting the correct board version.
4. As a last resort, reinstall the meta-packages to trigger the post-install scripts again:
After that, reboot and check uname -a. If it still shows the old one, check your config.txt in the firmware partition to see if there’s a hardcoded kernel = line pointing to the old version.
I looked for that information in the Raspberry Pi Forum
It is a problem with my particular installation. I was able to use a fresh install of 25.10 and then upgrade to resolute…it updated the kernel properly.
I’m still looking for ways to troubleshoot the process, but now I understand better way to look.
Update: After using @marcelstevano advice, I started looking closer into the issue. Through some issue with my upgrade path, I needed to load flash-kernel-piboot, it uninstalled flash-kernel and that fixed the issue.
So while I was wanting to “watch” the uboot process, the real place to look was flash-kernel.
