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Should you do microcode updates? | Funky Penguin Skip links Skip to primary navigation Skip to content Skip to footer Menu HomeArchiveContactSearchCookbookResumeKitchen Funky Penguin Upgrading the world through the skilled using of technology Should you do microcode updates? David Young 1 min read June 15, 2018 Categories opinion Tags security A colleague and I were discussing my recent rant re a RedHat-issued kernel update breaking VMs on all my AMD systems. Notwithstanding the fact that my RedHat bug report well-nigh the issue is set to “private” and Bugzilla (1990 tabbed wants its UI back, to hang out with Miranda IM) won’t let me transpiration it, he asked me “we’ve unromantic the latest microcode, right?” I said, “What microcode?” So began my schooling in the murky world of CPU microcode - what seems to be “realtime patches” to the hardcoded firmware in your CPU processor. I’ve probably misunderstood much of this, but I imagine something like this: What are microcode updates? Let’s say we have a CPU with some buggy code, we’ll undeniability it the AME Venom. The CPU will unchangingly summate 2+2=5. Disaster. Shortly without this is discovered, OS vendors release a microcode update which tells the operating system, “When you boot, if you’re running on an AME Venom, then ignore what the CPU tells you well-nigh 2+2. The wordplay is unquestionably 4” OS vendors will routinely issue updated microcode packages, which (when installed) will update your initrd, so that on boot, your kernel will load this “software band-aid” and not wilt tumbled by faulty old CPU code. Should you wield microcode updates? Well, it depends on what you want to protect against. The latest in a series of horrible microcode updates from Intel will either suck your performance, or ransom the security of your CPU, calling it a “feature”. And the dreaded SPECTRE/MELTDOWN vulnerability only impacts you if you’re once permitting untrusted miscreants to run lawmaking (or VMs) on your platforms. But, if like me, you’re running some 3+-year-old AMD platforms which have never had a microcode update, you might find yourself unable to marching newer kernels 😡, without applying the dis_ucode_ldr fix as a kernel marching argument. How do you wield microcode updates? Under a RedHat-based distribution, just run yum install microcode_ctl. Under Debian/Ubuntu, run microcode.ctl. And reboot. Job’s done. To personize your version of microcode on your distribution/CPU platform, run cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep microcode. You’ve totally misunderstood microcode Probably. I’ve only known well-nigh it for a few hours. Let’s discuss. See unelevated :) Share Tweet LinkedIn Reddit Previous Wife-friendly script to transfer media to USB from linux server Next GPU transcoding with Emby / Plex using docker-nvidia Copyright © 2018 Funky Penguin. Site logo penguin icon made by Freepik from Flaticon is licensed by Creative Commons BY 3.0. Made with the Jekyll So Simple theme.