Kernelstub's initrd.img isn't updated automatically any time the initramfs is

[Ian Santopietro]

update-initramfs is called in a wide variety of cases, and this will automatically update the initramfs stored on disk, even without updating the kernel. However, kernelstub only automatically runs on updates when the kernel is upgraded. This can lead to a case where the packages on the system and the booted initrd.img are out of sync, which can cause many different issues.

Example:

1. Install kernelstub
2. Reboot > Boot/login works
3. Update Kernel > Boot/login works
4. Update Nvidia Driver > > Boot/login fails

The Nvidia driver update rebuilds the initrd.img stored on disk. However, because there was no kernel update, the /etc/kernel/postinst.d trigger was never run, therefore the system was booted using the pre-update kernelstub

[Ian Santopietro (isantop)]

Revision 16 adds options to manually specify the kernel and initrd. This is fundamental infrastructure for keeping the initrd up to date, since update-initramfs creates a backup of the old initrd that breaks the automatic detection, requiring manual specification.

[Ian Santopietro (isantop)]

More robust support while installing and removing kernels has been added. Kernelstub now takes -k and -i arguments which set the kernel image and initrd image paths respectively. These are passed in the Kernel and Initrd trigger files to ensure that kernelstub is passed the correct files and reduce the odds of non-boots.