microcode update does not apply at boot, works later

[Reuben Thomas]

Binary package hint: microcode.ctl

At boot I get the following message:

Applying Intel IA32 Microcode update... firmware_helper[3893]: main: error loading '/lib/firmware/intel-ucode/06-09-05' for device '/devices/platform/microcode/firmware/microcode' with driver '(unknown)'

If I run

wajig start microcode.ctl

later, I get the expected:

Applying Intel IA32 Microcode update... done

Here's my /proc/cpuinfo:
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 9
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1000MHz
stepping : 5
cpu MHz : 600.000
cache size : 1024 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pbe up bts est tm2
bogomips : 1201.06
clflush size : 64

I can't find any traces of what microcode.ctl does in the system logs; I suppose I can turn on boot logging (how?) in order to get more info if that would be useful.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
Package: microcode.ctl 1.17-9
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/NX/bin:/usr/local/epocemx/bin:/home/username/bin:/home/username/local/i686/bin:/home/username/local/bin:/home/username/.luarocks/bin:/home/username/Work/Adsensus/svn/nancy/trunk:/home/username/Work/Adsensus/svn/adsensus/trunk:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
SourcePackage: microcode.ctl
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-21-generic i686

[uljanow (ssakar)]

firmware_helper belongs to udev. There might be a udev rule needed or/and mircocode.ctl needs to use /lib/firmware/ instead of /usr/share/misc/intel-microcode.dat .

[Jack Tsou (tsoumt-tw)]

Same here, except that '/lib/firmware/intel-ucode/06-09-05' is changed to '/lib/firmware/intel-ucode/06-0f-0b' in my situation. I'm on a Lenovo Thinkpad R61, CPU : Core 2 Duo T7500. OS: Intrepid amd64. I guess it may be caused by slow udev initiation, but not for sure. A temporary workaround is to start the init script (S80microcode.ctl) a little later in the boot sequence. I put it to /etc/rc2.d/S13microcode.ctl and solved the problem.

[Henrique de Moraes Holschuh (hmh)]

You need the new-generation intel-microcode package (versions 1.* and above).

Please refer to LP: #1054979.

You will still get firmware-loader errors if no microcode updates for your specific processor are available. This is how it is supposed to work for Intel processors ATM.