Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 7 Aug 2003 15:38:31 +0100 (BST) | From | Chris Rankin <> | Subject | Re: Loading Pentium III microcode under Linux - catch 22! |
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--- Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote: > As far as I am aware none of the microcode updates > even apply to 933Mhz era PIII, just the ones the > BIOS ships with by default nowdays. Also the kind of > stuff the errata fix are obscure ultra-weird corner > cases people just don't hit.
Lucky me, eh?
My CPUs *do* take microcode, and they are 933 MHz... ;-). I upgraded from a pair of 733 MHz CPUs bought in July 2000, and my current BIOS just doesn't have any microcode for them. Without the update, I used to come back at the end of the day, switch on the KVM and be unable to use the keyboard and mouse.
Anyway, I wasn't aware that Intel had released a changelist for their microcode updates. Goodness knows what bugs they're fixing.
> Thus I'd be very suprised if loading the microcode > any earlier was neccessary - certainly nobody else > has reported needing to.
My machine is currently hanging during boot-up (while fscking the root partition, or releasing the "init" memory), and CPU malfunction is the leading candidate explanation. I have already replaced the 300W PSU with a 400W one and tested the memory.
> > In an ideal world, I would like Linux to load the > > microcode *before* the kernel boots, which begs > > the question of "How?". Can you suggest anything, > > please? > > The kernel can't load the microcode until it has > booted,
Yes, that's the "catch-22" bit. I was originally thinking about either a bootstrapping floppy disk, or maybe hacking some code into the boot-up sequence itself.
> it can load it very early after that from initrd.
OK, I'll look into that.
Cheers, Chris
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