Title: installkernel is no longer implicitly installed Author: Andrew Ammerlaan Posted: 2024-02-26 Revision: 2 News-Item-Format: 2.0 Display-If-Installed: sys-kernel/installkernel Display-If-Installed: >=sys-apps/debianutils-5.14-r1 Display-If-Installed: app-misc/ca-certificates /sbin/installkernel is a script called by the kernel's "make install" as well as by the distribution kernel's post-install phase. If you are reading this then chances are you use and rely on installkernel[1] and what follows is essential for you. Previously sys-kernel/installkernel was implicitly installed on many systems via a dependency in sys-apps/debianutils. This dependency was toggled by the "installkernel" USE flag, and enabled by default. Until recently, sys-apps/debianutils was in turn pulled in by app-misc/ca-certificates, an essential package installed on many systems. However, this dependency of app-misc/ca-certificates on sys-apps/debianutils was removed[2]. As a result many users may find that sys-apps/debianutils and therefore sys-kernel/installkernel are no longer part of the dependency graph and will therefore be cleaned up by "emerge --depclean". Removing sys-kernel/installkernel from your system WILL change the way kernels are installed by "make install"! Instead of the versioned /boot/vmlinuz-x.y.z that you are used to, "make install" will simply copy bzImage (or equivalent for your arch) into /boot. This image may not be picked up by your bootloader or its configuration tools. To avoid surprises from such implicit dependencies from happening again in the future, the dependency on sys-kernel/installkernel in sys-apps/debianutils is removed. And as such, sys-kernel/installkernel is only installed on the system if it is either explicitly selected or pulled in via the distribution kernels (e.g. gentoo-kernel(-bin)). User Action Required (users of manually managed kernels) ==================== Users who manually configure, compile, and install their kernels, i.e. users of the sys-kernel/*-sources packages, and who wish to continue to use sys-kernel/installkernel, must ensure that it is explicitly selected by emerging it: emerge --noreplace sys-kernel/installkernel Users who find that sys-kernel/installkernel has already been cleaned from their systems and are therefore affected by the change in kernel installation described above should re-install sys-kernel/installkernel and then re-install their kernel. emerge sys-kernel/installkernel cd /usr/src/linux # (or other location of the kernel sources) make install No manual action is required for users of the distribution kernels: - sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel, or - sys-kernel/gentoo-kernel-bin, or - sys-kernel/vanilla-kernel [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Installkernel [2] https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.git/commit/?id=6e6ccafd58bc7401fa371d2f255d72ddae0131e6