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I'm not an everyday linux user but I'm not a novice either. I need ubuntu for a software project and it's easiest for me to use a traditional virtual machine (although I'm considering multipass).

I'm also on an arm version of macOS and VMWare's "tech preview" was my best option. The vm install and everything went reasonably well, but in order to get display resolutions greater than 1024x768 VMWare advises to update to the 5.14+ kernel. However, there appears to be a problem, described here:

mainline kernel now depends on libc6 2.33, non-installable in focal?

Summary: the kernel headers rely on a libc6 version newer than what 20.04 provides, so the headers don't get properly installed, causing the boot process to fail.

There looks to be kernel offerings from tuxinvader, but I can't tell from the PPA if there are arm64 options. Besides, this isn't a great long-term solution.

Another option is to compile a custom kernel, but I'd like to avoid that if there are better options.

After an ubuntu upgrade my kernel is at 5.13, but I need 5.14+ in order to make this a proper workstation with better resolutions.

Is there anything I can do short of compiling my own kernel (or look for a non-vmware solution)? Seems strange that after many months this hasn't been resolved, so I'm making sure I'm not missing something.

EDIT: Here is the information requested by @n0rbert:

$ uname -a
Linux <hostname> 5.13.0-28-generic #31~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP <datestamp> aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

$ dpkg -l | grep 'linux-image'
linux-image-5.11.0-41-generic Signed (arm64)
linux-image-5.13.0-28-generic Signed (arm64)
linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04 Generic (arm64)
rjcarr
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  • Please add the following information to the question by editing it: uname -a; dpkg -l | grep "linux-image". – N0rbert Jan 25 '22 at 06:08
  • Hi @N0rbert, thanks, I added the information you requested. – rjcarr Jan 25 '22 at 18:44
  • I'm not sure about arm64 specifics, but you can try to compile kernel from jammy (not impish) using method similar to my post. Or maybe even try latest 22.04 LTS daily build to save time. – N0rbert Jan 25 '22 at 20:17
  • Thanks @N0rbert, but I was trying to avoid a custom kernel or re-installing the operating system. – rjcarr Jan 25 '22 at 21:32
  • Hi @N0rbert, see my post below for more details on what worked for me. Any idea what happened there? – rjcarr Jan 25 '22 at 21:54

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So I'm not sure if this is a solution or what exactly is going on, but I tried using the script 'ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh' to do the kernel update work for me, thinking it would fail or similarly not work.

Running the script to install v5.14.21 it mentioned it "found more files than expected", but I told it to proceed. It continued on downloading and installing correctly, but at the end it mentioned failing a checksum but installing anyway, and everything seemed fine.

Upon restart grub won't boot the default kernel, which is now 5.14.21-64k (whatever that is), but when manually selecting 5.14.21 it boots as expected.

I can confirm that it is indeed running 5.14.21 and I do have the resolution options I was promised. Whew.

So I really I have no idea what happened, since the kernel script hid the details, but it seems to be working now. Maybe it is something to do with these extra "64k" kernels? Not sure what those are, but seems I should keep them around for now.

If anyone has any insight as to what is going on I'd be interested in an explanation.

rjcarr
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