Bug#1106757: ppc64el Trixie: Need default 64KB page kernel or installer option

On 2025-07-22 23:02, Paul Gevers wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 22-07-2025 14:43, Trupti wrote:
>> I upgraded my system from Bookworm to Trixie using apt full-upgrade. 
>> The system is now running Trixie, but it's still using the old 
>> Bookworm kernel (6.1.0-37-powerpc64le).
> 
> 
> Did you reboot? Can you check what you have in /boot?
> 
>> Is there a way to make sure the system automatically installs and uses 
>> the latest 64K kernel during the upgrade?
> 
> 
> Currently only by installing the non-default kernel. Because the
> default upgrade path should install the 4k kernel.
> 
> Paul


Yes, I did reboot after the full upgrade. The system is now running the 
Trixie kernel, but it’s still using the default 4K page size. My goal 
was to upgrade to Trixie with the 64K kernel, but the upgrade path 
installs only the 4K kernel by default, and switching to 64K requires 
manually installing the linux-image-powerpc64le-64k package.

This isn’t just about avoiding manual steps — as mentioned earlier, 64K 
is the recommended page size for ppc64el, and other distributions like 
Ubuntu already use it by default on Power.

As Pascal pointed out earlier, offering this choice in the installer 
(e.g., via expert install) would require including the 64K kernel 
packages in the ISO image itself. That’s why I’m requesting that the 64K 
kernel be included in the installation images — so users can choose 
between kernel flavours at install time without needing post-install 
steps. It would be helpful if this could be considered for future Debian 
releases.


Thanks Trupti.