Hello !

I'm trying to build my custom Armbian image for a Raspberry Pi. When I build it with these settings, I get a rolling release, which I don't want.

compile.sh BRANCH=current BUILD_DESKTOP=no BUILD_MINIMAL=yes DISABLE_IPV6=true INCLUDE_HOME_DIR=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no NETWORKING_STACK=network-manager RELEASE=trixie  EXPERT=yes BOARD=rpi4b

 

 

But when I boot with the official armbian minimal image (Armbian_25.8.1_Rpi4b_trixie_current_6.12.41_minimal.img) It's not on the rolling release.

Do I miss a setting ?

 

edit:

I've tried with building the image on the main and the v25.08 branch.

Edited August 29, 20251 yr by Stefal

Stable images  can only be built by Armbian.  All user built images are essentially rolling releases.  But once booted into an image, you can use armbian-config to switch to the stable apt repositories, which means you won't get bug fixes or security updates to the kernel, but instead you get a stable kernel build released once every three months.

14 minutes ago, SteeMan said:

All user built images are essentially rolling releases

Ho ! That's a new thing isn't it ? And IMHO, a strange choice.

Is there a way to disable that rolling release during the image building process?

56 minutes ago, SteeMan said:

Stable images  can only be built by Armbian.  All user built images are essentially rolling releases.  But once booted into an image, you can use armbian-config to switch to the stable apt repositories, which means you won't get bug fixes or security updates to the kernel, but instead you get a stable kernel build released once every three months.

With the armbian build system, you can build either Bookworm or Trixie

 

You will always get the latest Bookworm or the latest Trixie packages in a freshly built armbian OS.

 

This is what's meant by "always rolling release"... not to be understood as "always sid or Trixie".

 

Independently, the armbian build system will let you choose a stable Linux version, or the latest available from Armbian (edge).

Edited August 29, 20251 yr by robertoj

Armbian kernel and BSP

Debian/Ubuntu userland

On 8/29/2025 at 6:43 PM, SteeMan said:

But once booted into an image, you can use armbian-config to switch to the stable apt repositories

Regardless of which version I boot ("official" or home built with current) , the apt repositories are the same.

 

And after I apt update && apt upgrade the "current" release, the "rolling" message disappears from the MOTD.

On 8/29/2025 at 7:38 PM, robertoj said:

This is what's meant by "always rolling release"... not to be understood as "always sid or Trixie".

I understand that I should not care of these MOTD messages, the meaning is not what I thought it was.

9 hours ago, Stefal said:

I understand that I should not care of these MOTD messages, the meaning is not what I thought it was.

 

Building a rolling release is more than just showing that in the MOTD.

 

If you do "sudo apt upgrade" in an OS image you just built, you probably will have zero or one packages to upgrade.

If you start with an image built a long time ago, or with packages defined a long time ago, then "sudo apt upgrade" would take a long time.