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I see that latest netboot mini.iso of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) still has kernel version 5.4.0-42 which is quiet old.

Is it possible to have the same netboot mini.iso with newer kernel, for example HWE 5.13?

N0rbert
  • 99,918

1 Answers1

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Yes, it possible by building our own mini.iso from sources. The build process should be run inside Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on real hardware, VM or in Docker with enabled deb-src lines in /etc/apt/sources.list.

Exact list of commands is the following.

# sudo sed -i 's/# deb-src/deb-src/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install fakeroot
sudo apt-get build-dep debian-installer

cd ~/Downloads
apt-get source debian-installer
cd debian-installer-20101020ubuntu614.3
cd build


change kernel version only for amd64 which we are currently running


sed -i "s/BASEVERSION = 5.4.0-42/BASEVERSION = 5.13.0-28/g" config/amd64.cfg


make reallyclean
fakeroot make build_netboot

The resulting ISO will be available on the dest/netboot/mini.iso path, it will use 5.13 HWE kernel.
So it will compatible with wider spectrum of hardware on first boot time.

Important: to install HWE kernel 5.13 into target system one should boot using Advanced Options → Expert Install, follow wizard as usual and then on the Install the base system screen select linux-generic-hwe-20.04 kernel to install

d-i, expert install, select linux-generic-hwe-20.04 to install

then proceed with GRUB installation and so on.

Later in spring this system may be upgraded to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) using release upgrade procedure.

Latest HWE kernel version may be determined from:

General documentation about Debian installer is here:

N0rbert
  • 99,918