read-only boot partition?

[tpchuckles]

Hi all,
I'm not sure if this is really a linux / debian / whatever issue, or what, but it seems my /boot partition is read only. (let me know, or mods, feel free to move me).

I installed the original Debian version (not the "unofficial installer"), which installs Debian 9 or so, then upgraded that to Debian Sid (via the usual "update the releases file and apt-get update , apt-get update", and resolving some dependency issues). Then only recently, I realized that apt-get dist-upgrade doesn't actually upgrade the kernel like it does in ubuntu (been using xuubuntu for 12 years or so now, and not much else), so I went along with this to upgrade the kernel, but ran into an error where apt-get / dpkg said /boot was read-only. indeed, "cd /boot; sudo touch 'testing.txt'" shows it's read only, even to root, despite "sudo ls -l" from "/" telling me root ought to have read permissions. strange. This is linux installed on the eMMC module, which /boot and / (which includes home which i've been freely writing to for a while now) are partitions on.

it shouldn't be device dependent (both home (which I can write to) and boot (which I can't) are on the same device). it shouldn't be OS / mount dependent (nothing in fstab aside from swap, and "ls -l" says root is allowed to write to it). so what's up?

I did find this thread, but it appears to not really be resolved.

I'm also not exactly sure where else to look (what system logs, etc, and where?). (un)fortunately, xubuntu has served me extraordinarily well over the years and I spend more of my time doing daily computerly things than i do looking through logs files and troubleshooting things (so I may be a bit out of the loop, please bear with me).

EDIT: interesting. I was able to unmount /boot via gparted, then remount it (idk, an icon showed up on my desktop and i clicked on it), and then I was able to write to it, and "sudo apt-get install linux-image05.8...". I did see a few warnings appear, regarding drivers not found though. rebooting, I appear to still be in linux 4.4.207, per uname.

google tells me I'd want to update grub if i were on a more typical system which used grub, but otherwise i'm not sure how to get into the newer kernel which is supposedly installed. (also unsure if i even want to get into the newer kernel, given those driver errors it showed....)

[wdt]

4.4.207?? You didn't get most up to date on git,, 4.4.210,, and the (mrfixit) updates to 4.4.213
(ls /lib/modules)
That update is an icon just left of clock, bottom right (logged in as root)
If you added a user, it (icon) may not be there (also updates & writes u-boot)
/usr/bin/mrfixit_update.sh (as root,, it will modify extlinux.conf too)
BTW, extlinux has NOTHING to do with syslinux, just the same name
I don't think you want (or should) use a stock debian kernel,
it lacks pbp specific patches
You know kernel is 64 bit,, userland armhf (32 bit)?? (mrfixit distro)

[tpchuckles]

4.4.207?? You didn't get most up to date on git,, 4.4.210,, and the (mrfixit) updates to 4.4.213
(ls /lib/modules)
That update is an icon just left of clock, bottom right (logged in as root)
If you added a user, it (icon) may not be there (also updates & writes u-boot)
/usr/bin/mrfixit_update.sh (as root,, it will modify extlinux.conf too)
BTW, extlinux has NOTHING to do with syslinux, just the same name
I don't think you want (or should) use a stock debian kernel,
it lacks pbp specific patches
You know kernel is 64 bit,, userland armhf (32 bit)?? (mrfixit distro)

yup, 4.4.207. only updating I ever did here was the "standard" routes (apt-get update / upgrade / dist-upgrade), so i guess I missed that. (and I made a new user right away so I guess i never saw the updates icon, thanks for pointing that out).

ls /lib/modules:
4.4.207  5.8.0-1-armmp 5.8.0-1-armmp-lpae
(5.8.0-1 is what I apt-get installed manually per here, but clearly i'm not using it)

I found mrfixit_update.sh in /usr/bin just now, thank you! I was looking for it before but I never found it so i thought "hey maybe there's something different about the stock vs unofficial etc". i'll give that a poke and post back.

thanks for your help!