[gentoo-user] AMD Opteron microcode updates for spectre

[gentoo-user] AMD Opteron microcode updates for spectre

[Taiidan]

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When is gentoo going to receive these?


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Re: [gentoo-user] AMD Opteron microcode updates for spectre

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2018 at 9:20 PM, Taiidan@gmx.com <Taiidan@gmx.com> wrote:
> When is gentoo going to receive these?
>

Has AMD actually released anything publicly?  I find AMD's microcode
updates to be horribly documented in general, unless there is some
website somewhere published by AMD that somebody could be helpful
enough to point out...

Typically these work their way into linux-firmware, somehow, usually
without any indication as to what they actually do.  Back when Spectre
first was discovered there was a microcode update being circulated
that many thought addressed Spectre but my understanding is that it
turned out to have nothing to do with it.  Not that you would
necessarily know one way or another as it is just a binary blob devoid
of any kind of release notes.

I've always been an AMD fan but they'd do their customers a great
service if they just posted a website with links to various versions
of their microcode and even a sentence or two describing why each was
released.

All that said, once you do get updated microcode it can be loaded
following some instructions on the wiki (easiest way is to embed the
microcode in the kernel and there might be a kernel option you need to
toggle).

Looking at the linux-firmware upstream git I don't see any recent
AMD-related commits there.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/log/

In any case, if somebody spots a blob from someplace reasonably
credible I'm sure the linux-firmware maintainers wouldn't object to
filing a bug...

-- 
Rich