AGL Kernel Version: What Does Each Board in Vibrant Vimba 22.0.0 Boot?

Teams that choose a release of Automotive Grade Linux as the base for a cockpit or instrument-cluster prototype usually start from the release-notes page. That page gives the Yocto Project release, the Qt and Flutter versions and the supported boards. It does not give the AGL kernel version. This post reads that version from the build artefacts that AGL publishes, compares the result with the position recorded on 26 August 2026, and sets it against the kernel.org maintenance table read today. It is aimed at engineers who must state an AGL kernel version and an end-of-life date in a design review.

This post follows our earlier reading of the release series, the state of Automotive Grade Linux in 2026, which established which release sits on which Yocto baseline. The question here is one level lower: which AGL kernel version is inside each image.

The AGL kernel version is missing from the release page

The AGL Unified Code Base release notes live on the AGL wiki. The page read for this post carries the footer “Last modified: 2026/09/25 14:29 by jsmoeller”. Three release series appear on it: Vibrant Vimba, Ultimate Unagi, and Quirky Quillback as the old-stable release on Yocto Kirkstone 4.0.x.

For Vibrant Vimba the page lists a new release, v22.0.0, with the statement “Based on: YP Wrynose 6.0.2”. Its feature list names Flutter 3.38.3, Qt v6.12.0-beta3, a base Xen support layer called meta-agl-xen, V4H support in meta-agl-ic-container and initial Slint support. For Ultimate Unagi the newest entry is v21.0.4, with the notable changes “Yocto Project ‘scarthgap’ 5.0.20” and layer and BSP updates.

The word “kernel” does not appear anywhere on the page. The string “SoDeV”, the name AGL gave in December 2025 to its software-defined-vehicle reference platform, also does not appear. A reader who wants the AGL kernel has to go to the artefacts.

The page also still carries two inconsistencies recorded on 26 August. Its introductory prose names Terrific Trout as the latest stable release while the heading below presents Vibrant Vimba, and the Vimba known issues still say “R-Car Gen3 is not yet available (eta from upstream ~Oct)” although the same release publishes an h3ulcb image directory, the Renesas R-Car H3 board.

What changed between 26 August and 30 October 2026

On 26 August the release-notes page listed Ultimate Unagi up to v21.0.3 on Yocto Scarthgap 5.0.19, and Vibrant Vimba only as milestone builds, v21.91.0 and v21.92.0, with a Jira filter labelled “Vibrant Vimba 22.0.0”. Today the page lists Unagi v21.0.4 on Scarthgap 5.0.20 and a released Vimba v22.0.0 on Wrynose 6.0.2. The download-server directory for Vimba 22.0.0 carries build timestamps of 16 September 2026, and the Unagi 21.0.4 images carry 22 September 2026. Vibrant Vimba 22.0.0 is therefore the first released AGL version in this beat’s record that is based on Yocto Wrynose, the long-term-support release that follows Scarthgap; on 26 August only milestone builds existed.

The Yocto side moved as well. The official Yocto Project releases page, read on 30 October 2026, lists Wrynose 6.0.4 (September 2026) with long-term support until April 2030, Scarthgap 5.0.21 (September 2026) with long-term support until April 2028, and Blacksail 6.1 as a stable release until April 2027 with 6.1.0 dated September 2026. AGL’s stated bases are therefore two point releases behind on Wrynose (6.0.2 against 6.0.4) and one behind on Scarthgap (5.0.20 against 5.0.21).

Two Yocto sources disagree. The Yocto wiki releases page, read the same day, still lists Blacksail 6.1 as “October 2026” with no current version, and Scarthgap 5.0.18 (June 2026), the same value it carried on 26 August. The official page and the Yocto documentation list 5.0.21. The wiki page itself names the official page as the preferred source.

Where each AGL kernel version comes from

The AGL download server publishes, for every board, a directory of deploy images. The kernel image file name in each directory carries the kernel version string. Reading those file names on 30 October 2026 gives the AGL kernel version for each board. The “upstream tag date” column is the date of the stable tag with the same version number on git.kernel.org, and the last two columns come from the kernel.org release data read on 2 November 2026.

The full strings carry a suffix after the version number, for example 5.10.194+git0+6b085f452e on both R-Car H3 images and 6.18.24+git0+f94e250f9b on the Vimba QEMU image. That suffix is the form a Yocto kernel recipe produces when it builds from a git revision, and it shows that these are builds from a specific source revision and not unmodified release tarballs. The recipe revision in the R-Car H3 file name moved from r1.242 in Vimba to r1.244 in Unagi, while the version number stayed at 5.10.194.

Two mechanisms explain why one AGL release shows three different kernel lines. First, the QEMU images use the default kernel that the Yocto release selects. The Yocto 6.0 release notes list linux-yocto at 6.18.24+git as the new version in Wrynose, replacing 6.12.69 and 6.16.11 from the previous release, and the Vimba QEMU image carries exactly that version. The Unagi QEMU image carries 6.6.147. This post did not read the Scarthgap release notes, so it does not state Scarthgap’s default kernel as a documented fact. For Wrynose the documented link holds: the AGL kernel on a generic machine is the kernel the Yocto Project chose when it cut the release, not a decision made by AGL.

Second, each hardware machine takes its kernel from the layer that supports that board. The Raspberry Pi 5 images are presumably built with the Raspberry Pi layer, and the R-Car H3 images with the Renesas layer; AGL lists both layers (meta-raspberrypi and meta-renesas) among its Unagi BSP updates. A board layer chooses its own kernel line, and the AGL kernel on that board does not have to follow the Yocto release. That is how Unagi can carry 6.6.147 on QEMU and 6.12.93 on Raspberry Pi 5 in one release, and how both releases can carry 5.10.194 on the R-Car H3. This post infers the kernel provider for each machine from the version strings and from the Yocto release notes. It did not read the layer recipes, because the repo manifest for Vimba 22.0.0 could not be read from the AGL Gerrit server; the path tried returned HTTP 404.

Why the 5.10 row matters more than the others

The R-Car H3 is the Renesas automotive system-on-chip named in AGL’s own build-artefact table. The AGL kernel under it, 5.10.194, was tagged on 2 September 2023, more than three years before the release that ships it. The U-Boot file names on the same directory read v2020.10. Vendor board-support kernels commonly stay on one line for the life of a silicon family, and the version string cannot show which fixes the Renesas tree has back-ported. It does show the series, and the series has a published end date.

The kernel.org active-releases page, read on 2 November 2026, lists 6.18 and 6.12 with a projected end-of-life of December 2028, 6.6 and 6.1 with December 2027, and 5.15 and 5.10 with December 2026. The same page states that each new longterm kernel usually starts with a two-year projected end-of-life that can be extended if there is enough interest from the industry. The 5.10 date has not been extended so far and falls about two months after this post was written.

Set that against the Yocto dates. Wrynose is a long-term-support release until April 2030 and Scarthgap until April 2028. The Yocto LTS policy page defines what those dates cover: BitBake, OE-Core, meta-yocto and yocto-docs. It lists vendor layers among the things the project LTS does not cover. A board layer that carries its own kernel is such a layer. The Yocto date and the AGL kernel date are therefore separate dates with different owners, and for the R-Car H3 image the earlier one governs.

An engineer who writes “AGL Vibrant Vimba, long-term support to 2030” into a plan has recorded the Yocto date. The date that decides how long upstream stable fixes exist for the AGL kernel in the image is, depending on the board, December 2028 or December 2026. A product plan needs that date, and for a product that ships a vendor kernel it also needs a statement from the vendor on how that kernel is maintained after upstream stops.

What the Vimba feature list adds to the AGL kernel question

One item in the Vimba feature list bears on the AGL kernel without naming one: meta-agl-xen, described as a base Xen support layer. It implies that some images will run the kernel as a Xen guest or control domain, where the configuration may differ from the demo images. The page does not say which images, and this post did not read the layer. The feature list also names V4H support in meta-agl-ic-container, but the build-artefact table lists no V4H binary, so no V4H kernel version can be read from the public directories checked here.

What this does not show

The version strings come from file names, not from running the images. Nobody has booted these images for this post, although the uname command on an unmodified image should print the same numbers.

The images are demonstration builds for development boards and an emulator. They are not production vehicle software, and nothing here says which kernel any carmaker or supplier uses; a production programme would normally replace the board layer and the kernel with its own.

The “point releases behind” column counts version numbers. It does not count fixes. A vendor tree on 5.10.194 may carry back-ports from later 5.10 releases, and a tree on 6.18.24 may carry fixes from 6.18.60 that the version string does not reveal. A Raspberry Pi or Renesas kernel with the same version number as an upstream tag is not guaranteed to be an unmodified copy of it.

The sources checked do not say whether AGL plans to move the R-Car H3 image to a newer kernel. The release notes, the download directories and the known-issues list contain no statement on it, and the Gerrit manifest was not readable. That absence is not a finding about AGL’s intentions.

How to read the kernel version before you commit to a release

The check takes one command per board and needs no build. This runs on the host, and it reads the kernel image file name from the Vimba 22.0.0 R-Car H3 directory.

raghu@techveda.org:~$ curl -s https://download.automotivelinux.org/AGL/release/vimba/22.0.0/h3ulcb-nogfx/deploy/images/h3ulcb/ | grep -oE 'href="Image--[^"]+"' | head -1
href="Image--5.10.194%2Bgit0%2B6b085f452e-r1.242-h3ulcb-20260916164634.bin"

The %2B sequences are URL-encoded plus signs. Change the directory to check another board or release. After an image is booted, the same number is available on the board; the prompt below uses the QEMU machine name from the Vimba listing.

root@qemuarm64:~# uname -r

The output of that command on the Vimba QEMU image was not captured for this post; the directory listing indicates the value to expect.

Once the AGL kernel series is known, compare it with the kernel.org table for the end-of-life date, and then ask the board-layer maintainer for the maintenance statement that applies to the vendor tree.

Key takeaways

• The AGL release-notes page, last modified 25 September 2026, names Yocto baselines and no AGL kernel version. The version must be read from the download-server file names or from a booted image.
• Vibrant Vimba 22.0.0 (Yocto Wrynose 6.0.2, built 16 September 2026) carries 6.18.24 on QEMU arm64, 6.18.33 on Raspberry Pi 5 and 5.10.194 on the R-Car H3 image. Ultimate Unagi 21.0.4 (Scarthgap 5.0.20, built 22 September 2026) carries 6.6.147, 6.12.93 and 5.10.194.
• The QEMU kernel matches the linux-yocto version in the Yocto 6.0 release notes for Wrynose; hardware machines take their kernel from a board layer. One release therefore contains up to three kernel series.
• The R-Car H3 image runs a 5.10.194 kernel tagged on 2 September 2023, and the 5.10 series has a kernel.org projected end-of-life of December 2026.
• Yocto long-term support (April 2030 for Wrynose, April 2028 for Scarthgap) covers BitBake, OE-Core, meta-yocto and yocto-docs, and not vendor layers. It is not the end date of the kernel in the image.
• Version strings show the series and not the fixes. A vendor kernel may carry back-ports, and its maintenance statement has to come from the vendor.

Frequently asked questions

Does the AGL release page state which kernel a release uses?
No. The release-notes page read on 30 October 2026 does not contain the word kernel. The version is visible in the kernel image file names under the release directories on the AGL download server.

Which kernel does AGL Vibrant Vimba 22.0.0 use?
It depends on the board. The download-server file names show 6.18.24 for QEMU arm64, 6.18.33 for Raspberry Pi 5 and 5.10.194 for the Renesas R-Car H3 image. The first matches the linux-yocto version in the Yocto 6.0 release notes.

Does Yocto long-term support until April 2030 mean the kernel is supported until 2030?
No. The Yocto LTS policy covers BitBake, OE-Core, meta-yocto and yocto-docs and excludes vendor layers. The kernel.org projected end-of-life for the 6.18 series is December 2028, and for the 5.10 series used by the R-Car H3 image it is December 2026.

Can a vendor kernel on 5.10.194 still receive security fixes after December 2026?
Possibly, if the board vendor maintains its own tree or kernel.org extends the series. The sources checked state neither, so the answer has to come from the vendor for the exact tree in use.

Further reading

• AGL Unified Code Base release notes (primary; read 30 October 2026, page last modified 25 September 2026)
• AGL download server, Vibrant Vimba 22.0.0 and Ultimate Unagi 21.0.4 (primary; per-board image directories read 30 October 2026)
• The Yocto Project releases page (primary; read 30 October 2026)
• Yocto Project release notes for 6.0 (Wrynose) and 6.1 (Blacksail) (primary; recipe upgrade tables for linux-yocto)
• Yocto Project stable branch maintenance and long-term support (primary; components covered by the LTS)
• kernel.org active kernel releases and releases.json (primary; read 2 November 2026)
• Stable tree tag v5.10.194, v6.18.24 and v6.6.147 (primary; tag dates)