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If you can read me, I'm broken!

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Tags: boot   apt   18.04   intel   cpu   grub  
Link: šŸ” See Original Answer on Ask Ubuntu ā§‰ šŸ”—

URL: https://askubuntu.com/q/1155662
Title: Intel-microcode package upgrade in ubuntu 18.04 leads to unbootable system
ID: /2019/07/03/Intel-microcode-package-upgrade-in-ubuntu-18.04-leads-to-unbootable-system
Created: July 3, 2019    Edited:  June 12, 2020
Upload: May 5, 2024    Layout:  post
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When the meltdown and spectre virus potential was first discovered (but no actual virus) the first patches in early 2018 also broke the microcode.

The microcode is loaded before grub boots the kernel during the initramfs stage but you can also tell the kernel not to run the code until the microcode is fixed. This may or may not give you microcode updates and still run the kernel. You would need to update your grub command line with these options:

nopti nospectre_v2 nospec

These three grub options are what I use but the middle link above has even more options to consider.

Iā€™m not suggesting you disable your meltdown/spectre kernel options for speed but rather in order to use your microcode.

The other option is to roll back your microcode to a version prior to the bug. You can only discover if this is possible by trial and error:

ā‡§ Can you install Ubuntu on the Raspberry Pi 4 How can I search within a manpage?  ā‡©