I booted an old Rock 4C+ and managed to upgrade from Debian 11.11 to 12.15, but when I’m trying to go to 13, it fails with this message when running apt update
Err:7 README rockchip-trixie Release
404 Not Found [IP: 185.199.110.153 443]
Reading package lists… Done
E: The repository ‘README rockchip-trixie Release’ does not have a Release file.
How can I solve this?
Debian Trixie is not broken, but it seems ‘Rockchip Trixie‘ or ‘RadxaOS Trixie’
So some server/cloud/network is not reachable, or the above modified Trixies don’t exist and the previous version what you have now installed is simply the latest. I would say check that. And maybe list what is in sources.list*
On the other option is to switch to Debian. so meaning notthing from Rockchip or Radxa specific, You might have more luck when just Debian Forky or Sid as those should have up-to-date kerne/dtb. I am not sure if the U-Boot you use might be or is a problem.
If you can list kernel versionstring and also U-Boot version of your current running installation, that would help getting forward I hope.
So, I started with 11.11 and got to 12.15.
My sources.list is (now after replacing bookworm with trixie)
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian` trixie main contrib non-free deb https://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-backports main contrib non-free deb https://deb.debian.org/debian-security trixie-security main contrib non-free deb https://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-updates main contrib non-free deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/radxa-archive-keyring.gpg] https://radxa-repo.github.io/trixie trixie main deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/radxa-archive-keyring.gpg] https://radxa-repo.github.io/trixie rockchip-trixie main deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/vscodium-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.vscodium.com/debs vscodium main`
I dont mind dropping radxa specifics if that solves my problem and just run debian trixie if that makes life easier.
Right now uname says:
Linux rock-4c-plus 5.10.110-39-rockchip #17309c71b SMP Thu Aug 29 03:31:32 UTC 2024 aarch64 GNU/Linux
I removed the offending sources.list.d file and will see if any error emerges. Otherwise I’m happy.
Should I keep the other radxa lines, or will life be better without them?
You can see from:
that there is no Trixie from Radxa. Overall, kernel 6.1 is latest from Rockchip, no matter what distro. Your 5.10 works but does not get updates and is the previous from Rockchip.
So this is a typical thing for ARM SBC’s: the kernel is not the one from Debian, currently: 6.12.107+deb13-arm64 #1 SMP Debian 6.12.107-1 (2026-08-29)
but something downstream specific for the SBC or SoC.
If you want Trixie, your best bet is Armbian, they also have 3 versions of the kernel to choose from. Which to pick depends on what your SBC should do.