The Debian project has announced that the release of Debian 12.3, scheduled for today, has been postponed. The reason for this delay is a serious bug in the Linux kernel version 6.1.64-1, which could cause data corruption on systems using the ext4 file system.
The bug, identified as #1057843, affects the software RAID10 driver and could lead to data loss when using fstrim. The Debian developers have issued a warning to users, especially those who have enabled unattended-upgrades on their systems.
Users are urged not to update their systems until a fix is available. If users try to update their systems now, they will download and install all the packages needed to upgrade to Debian 12.3, including the problematic kernel package “linux-image-amd64”.
However, this does not mean that users who have already upgraded to Debian 12.3 with ext4 as the default file system will lose their data, but rather that there is a possibility of this happening.
The Debian developers are working hard to resolve the issue and will provide updates as soon as possible. In the meantime, users can track the progress and get more information about the bug by visiting the Debian bug tracking page here.
According to the latest update on the bug tracker, the issue has been fixed in the upstream Linux kernel version 6.1.65, and the Debian developers are preparing to release a new kernel package version 6.1.66-1 for Debian 12.3.