[Pkg-raspi-maintainers] Bug#979213: raspi-firmware: Please add option to pin kernel/initramfs version

[Diederik de Haas]

Package: raspi-firmware
Version: 1.20201022-2
Severity: wishlist

Kernel 5.10 has entered unstable and that caused f.e. bug #978025, which
didn't happen with 5.9. Apparently there are more problems with it as 
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/ has changed the default branch
back from 5.10.x to 5.4.x.
Apart from that, Debian allows you to install multiple kernel versions
and on most (x86) systems you have GRUB which allows you to boot into an
alternative kernel version and/or change the default kernel version.

I've now manually changed /boot/firmware/config.txt to boot the 5.9
kernel (as this RPi runs mpd), but that will be overwritten with every
invocation of z50-raspi-firmware, which happens on a regular basis (at
least on a testing/sid system).

So it would be great if an option is added that will allow the user to
pin to a specific kernel/initramfs version (if specified).

Cheers,
  Diederik

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: arm64 (aarch64)

Kernel: Linux 5.9.0-5-arm64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_CRAP
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages raspi-firmware depends on:
ii  dosfstools  4.1-2
ii  dpkg        1.20.5
ii  file        1:5.39-3

raspi-firmware recommends no packages.

raspi-firmware suggests no packages.

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/default/raspi-firmware changed [not included]
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/z50-raspi-firmware changed [not included]

-- no debconf information