Bug#684569: linux-image-3.5-trunk-686-pae: microcode module loaded on Celeron CPU
On Mon, 13 Aug 2012, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Looking into this some more, this seems unlikely in Debian because the
> microcode packages are in non-free [1] and therefore not available for
> Debian users not having enabled non-free repositories.
>
> Because of that the microcode packages are also non-essential, that
> means not installed by default even when non-free packages are allowed.
> And normal users will never install them by themselves.
>
> So currently I am pretty sure 99,9999 % of Debian users do not have it
> installed.
That is correct, yes. We may change the Debian installer to offer to
install the microcode packages for AMD and/or Intel to users that enable
non-free. We could also document the availability of the microcode packages
in the release documentation, I suppose. But Debian really isn't big on the
non-free stuff.
> > With the latest mainline kernel the microcode driver should be automatically
> > loaded by CPUID probing through udev.
>
> How can I find out, if the microcode provided by my BIOS is older than
> the one provided by the processor vendor? I am pretty sure, that for
> example Intel does not release any updates for the Celeron CPU in my
> ASUS Eee PC 701 4G.
The easiest way, by far, is to attempt to update to the latest microcode in
the microcode distribution.
Assuming you're using Debian testing/unstable, install the intel-microcode
package (in unstable, install also package iucode-tool to avoid bloating the
initramfs). Then grep for "microcode" in the kernel logs. The 3.2 kernel
will log the fact that it had to update the processor microcode. If it
doesn't log anything, either no microcode for that processor model is
available, or you're already running newer microcode.
In Debian stable, it works the same way but I am not sure the kernel will
log anything of value.
If you want to do it the hard way:
"iucode-tool --scan-system" will tell you your processor's signature
(requires the cpuid module to be loaded first). If you're running Debian
stable, wait a few days for the Squeeze backport to hit the mirrors.
You can get the pf_mask and current version of microcode on each core from
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/microcode/, and you can check the
intel-microcode package changelog for your processor's signature to see if a
higher revision is available.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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