Debian on QNAP TS-41x/TS-42x

QNAP TS-419P from the front

Debian 10 (buster) was the last release to support QNAP TS-41x/TS-42x devices. These devices are not supported in Debian 11 (bullseye).

The reason is that the Linux kernel no longer fits into flash memory. These QNAP devices boot from a 16 MB flash chip. During the installation of Debian, we put the Linux kernel and a ramdisk (initramfs) into flash which in turn loads Debian from disk. Unfortunately, there's only 2 MB allocated for the kernel partition in flash, which is not enough to store a modern version of the Linux kernel.

Support for QNAP TS-41x/TS-42x was dropped from Debian 11 (bullseye) because of this limitation.

If you're running Debian on your QNAP TS-41x/TS-42x device, you have several options:

  1. Stay on Debian 10. Please note that security support stopped in September 2022.
  2. Upgrade to Debian 11 while keeping the kernel from Debian 10. Please see the release notes for instructions.
  3. Change the flash partition layout. Arnaud Mouiche has created a script that re-configures the partition layout.

My recommendation is for the third option: Arnaud Mouiche's method has been used by many users with success.