Ubuntu
linux-hwe-edge package

  1. Bug #1829620
  2. Comment #60

Comment 60 for bug 1829620

Revision history for this message
Steve Beattie (sbeattie) wrote : Re: intel-microcode on ASUS makes kernel stuck during loading initramfs on bionic-updates, bionic-security

Chris, thanks for confirming which processor is in use.

To force downgrade the microcode package on bionic, do:

  sudo apt install intel-microcode=3.20180312.0~ubuntu18.04.1

For other releases, you will need to replace the version with what version(s) are available for your release; you can use apt-cache policy to see what is available.

In the worst case, if the version you want to downgrade to is not available in the archive any more (e.g. for xenial or trusty), you can navigate to that release's information page for that package (e.g. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/xenial/+source/intel-microcode), navigate to the specific version you desire, and manually download the appropriate binary deb for your system, and install it via 'sudo dpkg -i intel_microcode-VERSION_ARCH.deb'.

One downside to using older versions is that, unless you use dpkg pinning to keep them in place, unattended-upgrades or some other update process will upgrade them to the current version available for that release, putting you right back to where you started.

An alternative approach would be to add IUCODE_TOOL_INITRAMFS=no to /etc/default/intel-microcode and then re-running 'update-initramfs -u' to remove the microcode bits from the initramfs image. NOTE: you will want to remember that you did this so that you can re-enable microcode updates once this issue has been resolved.

Thanks.