Michael wrote:
On Tuesday, 1 April 2025 11:12:44 British Summer Time Dale wrote:

Peter Humphrey wrote:

On Tuesday, 1 April 2025 01:44:18 British Summer Time Dale wrote:

... I have /usr on the same partition as / this time around.
Do I need a init thingy still or can I ditch that thing?  I do have /var
on a separate partition, if that matters.

I have /var on a separate partition on some machines, and I only need an
initrd for microcode loading. I suppose I could include that in the
kernel,
but I haven't tried that.

I thought about the fact I have a merged /usr now which means everything
is in /usr.  I hadn't thought of microcode being needed tho.  How do I
find out if there is any microcode being loaded on my system?  I do have
the package installed, read somewhere that it only loads something if it
is needed so no real harm in having it installed even if nothing is
being used today.  It could prove helpful if something is being used
later on tho. 

Is there somewhere I can look or some command I can run to see if I load
any microcode that it needs to access while booting but before /var is
mounted?  Why isn't the microcode put in /usr or something anyway? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

The microcode blobs are not in /usr, but in /lib/firmware; e.g.:

$ ls /lib/firmware/amd-ucode/
microcode_amd.bin         microcode_amd_fam16h.bin  microcode_amd_fam19h.bin
microcode_amd_fam15h.bin  microcode_amd_fam17h.bin  README

You either include the microcode required by your CPU in an initrd, or build 
it in your kernel by specifying it - along with any firmware needed by your 
graphics, etc. - in your kernel (CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE).


I have these. 


root@Gentoo-1 / # ls /lib/firmware/amd-ucode/
total 184
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   4096 Dec 16 12:28 .
drwxr-xr-x 104 root root  20480 Mar 22 07:36 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  12684 Mar 22 04:52 microcode_amd.bin
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   7876 Mar 22 04:52 microcode_amd_fam15h.bin
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   3510 Mar 22 04:52 microcode_amd_fam16h.bin
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  22596 Mar 22 04:52 microcode_amd_fam17h.bin
-rw-r--r--   1 root root 100684 Mar 22 04:52 microcode_amd_fam19h.bin
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   4662 Mar 22 04:52 README
root@Gentoo-1 / #


I'm family 25 so not sure if those apply.  Either way, I do have the amd-uc.img thing in /boot.  I think the firmware package puts it there.  Anyway, it finds it when I update grub config so I need a init thingy.  I was kinda hoping I could ditch it but I guess it is the best way to load the microcode thing.  I've read it is best to load the microcode pretty early.  It was a thought. 

By the way, I copied some large files over to a m.2 external stick and the copy was kinda slow.  I'm not sure what the cause of that is.  I've never had much luck with speed over USB tho.  May be a missing kernel option or something. 

Dale

:-)  :-)