[Pkg-raspi-maintainers] Bug#964915: raspi-firmware: upgrading kernel or firmware causes system to become unbootable on pi 4

[Gunnar Wolf]

tags 4964915 + confirmed
notfound 4964915 1.20190215-1+deb10u4
severity 4964915 critical
thanks

I am bumping up this bug to critical, as it «makes unrelated software
on the system (or the whole system) break» - Rendering a computer
unbootable is a critical bug in my book!

This bug does not affect the stable version of the firmware; I know
the control server will probably bark at me because there was a
package rename (and 1.20190215-1+deb10u4 belongs to raspi3-firmware),
but this still serves as documentation: This is the only reason why
the Raspberry images for families ≤ 3 do not break, while for RPi4
does. However, anybody installing a RPi on their own or upgrading to
unstable will be affected by this bug.

Also, to have things together in one place - Thanks to basti for
pointing out¹ the bug can be triggered (and easily tested) by running:

    update-initramfs -u -k all


¹ https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2020/07/msg00021.html