After some discussions over the past year with Trulan Martin the maintainer of the AV Linux Kernel Repository and with the knowledge that security exploits targeting the Linux Kernel are becoming more commonplace and require vigilance and rapid response from Kernel maintainers it has been decided with the recent release of AV Linux MX-21 Edition that the existing AV Linux Kernel Repository which was a source of both realtime (RT) and lowlatency (LL) Kernels should be shut down.
Kernel maintenance for a distributed product comes with an inherent obligation to be mindful of the safety and security of it’s Users and that has always been done but it has become too much of a daily responsibility to be mindful of and both Trulan and myself feel it has become a task better suited to full-timers. The Liquorix project has been doing full time kernel maintaining for many years now and is well established in the Linux community as a high-performing and well supported source of Kernels. AV Linux in recent years has always provided the Liquorix Repository as an alternate source of Kernels to serve those who have new Computers and those who required the installation of proprietary AMD and nVidia Video Drivers and with the release of AV Linux MX-21 Edition Liquorix is now the default supplied Kernel. It is important to note that the Liquorix Kernel sources are also packaged by MX Packager ‘Stevo’ and are included right in the MX Linux Repositories without needing to enable the Liquorix repository itself.
For users of previous versions of AV Linux MX Edition (AVL-MXE) based on MX-19/Debian Buster you will want to disable and/or remove the AVL Kernel Repo by editing your /etc/apt/sources.list file so when you do system upgrades you don’t get the Package Manager complaining about missing Repositories….”Huh, how do I do that!?” To do this launch the AV Linux Assistant and go to the ‘SYS-Editor’ Tab. The top button choice will be to ‘Edit APT Sources List”
This will open the /etc/apt/sources.list file for editing in which you will see a section that looks like this:
# AV LINUX KERNEL REPOSITORY *REALTIME AND LOWLATENCY PREEMPT DEFAULT KERNELSdeb http://www.bandshed.net/kernels/apt/ buster main
To disable the Repository simply put a hash (#) before the word ‘deb’ so it looks like the example below and Save the text file:
# deb http://www.bandshed.net/kernels/apt/ buster main
This is all that is really required to prevent APT from looking for the missing AVL Kernel Repo and no further action is required. If you want you can also delete that line completely but merely commenting it out with the hash is sufficient.
Lastly if you are running the MX-19/Buster version of AVL-MXE with the default 5.9 RT Kernel it came with you can safely continue to do so, that Kernel is up to date with all of the security patches that are known at the current time. I’d like to take a moment and give a heartfelt thanks on behalf of myself and AV Linux Users who have enjoyed the peppy performance of Trulan’s builds of both RT and LL Kernels over many years of the project, I will always be grateful for his help and attention to detail on our behalf!
Thanks for reading, apologies for any inconvenience!