System completely unresponsive after last batch of updates that pushed Backport kernel 6.12.12+bpo

Got rid of Ubuntu and performed a fresh install of OpenMediaVault on one of my machines as it suits my needs much better.

Performed the first batch of available updates including kernel 6.1.0.32, rebooted and everything was just working so I kept setting OMV. There was a new notification for more updates available which included kernel 6.12.12+bpo so I did those as well, rebooted and I was welcomed by a garbled screen with the machine completely unresponsive (no ssh, no web interface, no mouse and no keyboard).

I had to force shut down the machine and manually select kernel 6.1.0.32 from grub to bring it back to a functioning state and got rid of kernel 6.12.12+bpo.

Was that kernel pushed by mistake or what?

I was checking the logs and found these lines:

3/22/2025, 4:51:39 PM kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: Direct firmware load for i915/icl_dmc_ver1_09.bin failed with error -2
3/22/2025, 4:51:39 PM kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: firmware: failed to load i915/icl_dmc_ver1_09.bin (-2)
3/22/2025, 4:51:39 PM kernel: firmware_class: See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
3/22/2025, 4:51:39 PM kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: firmware: failed to load i915/icl_dmc_ver1_09.bin (-2)

Quote from ryecoaaron

OMV uses Debian and its kernels. So, it was Debian that pushed the kernel out. Seems like your system does not like the 6.12 kernel defaults. Since your system works on Ubuntu, I would install the kernel plugin and install the proxmox 6.8 or maybe 6.11 kernel and see if that works. I run the proxmox kernel on all of my OMV systems.

Just installed Proxmox kernel 6.8.12-8-pve and it just booted with none of those errors in the system logs. Can't believe that Debian messed up that bad. Thanks man.

Quote from ryecoaaron

Backports is a testing (basically beta) kernel. They can't test every system. The kernel is working well on a couple of my systems. I would guess you need to disable apic or acpi or something simple but it is easier to use the proxmox kernel.

Yeah I know about the backports repo. I was just surprised that the necessary firmware was missing though. Proxmox kernel works great and it boots faster. Finally enjoying OMV on bare metal as I had previously messed with it in a VM. Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.

Quote from ryecoaaron

You probably just needed to install the firmware-misc-nonfree from backports. proxmox just includes it in their big firmware package (pve-firmware).

I actually did that before installing the Proxmox kernel. I installed both firmware-linux-nonfree and firmware-misc-nonfree but it didn't work.