Sweet.
I can now go and feed my face, have a beer and watch the footy, and say "That was a good day".
Any win is a win, in my books.
Later, mate.
BTW
You and me both, I am only a couple of years your junior.
Excellent. You and me both
Maybe for another day if you have the inclination to have a look through the snippet I found. I wasn't game to do it this way as I don't quite understand some of it.
Source was
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/tips-2.html#ID7
Locking the kernel to its current version
7. Do you want to lock the current Linux kernel version ("freeze" it), for example in order to avoid potential complications because of a future kernel update?
That may be useful, e.g. when you've manually installed a driver which would become unusable with a newer kernel version.
The risk of such a locking of the kernel is limited, especially for desktop users (servers are another matter). Because although kernel updates generally also contain security fixes, attackers usually focus on other system parts, like your web browsers. It's therefore certainly not a wildly irresponsible thing to do.
You can compare it with another well-known device that's running on a Linux kernel: the Android cell phone, whose Linux kernel is part of its firmware. If you've ever owned one, you'll probably have noticed that firmware updates are few and far between. Yet the real-life risk of that for those devices, is low.
In order to lock the kernel, you can lock the generic meta packages for the kernel, to their current versions. By that locking your system won't get kernel updates anymore, because those meta-packages ensure that the updates contain newer kernels whenever they become available.
Note: I recommend to treat this locking as a temporary measure, so you can postpone those kernel updates until a convenient time when you're in no hurry. So that you can re-install your manually installed driver(s) for the new kernel, at a time that suits you.
Locking of your kernel can be done like this:
a. Make sure that all applications that deal with package management are closed (Update Manager, Software Manager, Driver Manager, Synaptic, etc.).
b. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this:
Click)
c. Now copy/paste the following command into the terminal (this is one line!):
sudo apt-mark hold "linux-generic*" "linux-headers-generic*" "linux-image-generic*" "linux-signed-generic*" "linux-signed-image-generic*" "linux-oem*"
Press Enter. Type your password when prompted. In Ubuntu this remains entirely invisible, not even asterisks will show when you type it, that's normal. In Mint this has changed: you do see asterisks. Press Enter again.
Note (1): The locking command covers both signed and unsigned kernels, whereas there will of course only be one of those two kernel categories in your system. So you'll get to see "couldn't find" messages about the kernel category that you don't have, which is normal and expected.
Note (2): Despite the locking, you'll still be offered updates for a small package called linux-libc-dev, which (unfortunately) identifies itself in Update Manager as "kernel". That's of course confusing, because it only contains some Linux kernel headers for development... Anyway, just install those updates (and if you're uncertain, check in Update Manager which package it really is that hides under that misleading label).
d. You're done! If you wish to check what packages have been put on hold, you can use this terminal command, for which no root permission (sudo) is required:
apt-mark showhold
Press Enter.
e. Below, in item 7.1, I'll describe how to undo this.
How to undo kernel locking
7.1. Do you wish to undo the locking of a kernel version? This is how:
a. Make sure that all applications that deal with package management are closed (Update Manager, Software Manager, Synaptic, etc.).
b. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this:
Click)
c. Now copy/paste the following command into the terminal (this is one line!):
sudo apt-mark unhold "linux-generic*" "linux-headers-generic*" "linux-image-generic*" "linux-signed-generic*" "linux-signed-image-generic*" "linux-oem*"
Press Enter. Type your password when prompted. In Ubuntu this remains entirely invisible, not even dots will show when you type it, that's normal. Press Enter again.
d. Now check whether the unlocking has succeeded; you can use this terminal command, for which no root permission (sudo) is required:
apt-mark showhold
Press Enter.
If everything has been unlocked, this command should show no output. At least not for kernel packages.
Done! You should again get kernel updates now, whenever they become available.
