out of tree modules and custom kernels in testing and beyond

[Andres Cimmarusti <acimmarusti@gmail.com>]

Hello

I have a couple of computers that are working ok using squeeze +
squeeze-backports.

I wanted to run wheezy on one of the computers, but a serious bug in
the bluetooth module firmware prevents the computer from restarting
properly. I want to debug this feature without having to wipe out my
existing squeeze installation which works well. So far I've tested
recent kernels and other features of wheezy using a usb-debian-live
image. It appears, however, that there's a fix, or at least a more
detailed debug log fix in kernel > 3.3-rc1. However this kernel is
unlikely to make it to wheezy (it appears the kernel team is leaning
towards 3.2). I compile kernels from upstream sources all the time,
but I don't know how to FORCE lb-config and lb-build to boot my
customized kernel instead of the one mainline. Can you give me some
pointers? (I've never set-up an APT repository... I would prefer to
avoid this unless it's the only way). Even if I wait for it to appear
in experimental (which seems like a reasonable option to me), how do I
go about forcing this version instead of the one in wheezy or sid for
that matter?

The other computer works great, but I get no audio over HDMI despite
installing a very recent kernel from backports. It appears the bug is
corrected in alsa in wheezy and I want to test this. However, to fully
test HDMI out on this computer, I need to have the nvidia non-free
kernel modules installed. On top of that it also requires the
broadcom-sta out of tree module for wifi. What do you guys recommend
for this?
For this second computer, I guess installing wheezy isn't
problematic... or at least I don't know, but I would love to test
carefully before deciding to upgrade

I'm not subscribed to this list, so if you could cc that would be great.

Thanks

Andres