AMD Releases BIOS Fix To Motherboard Partners For Booting Newer Linux Distributions

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Releases BIOS Fix To Motherboard Partners For Booting Newer Linux Distributions

AMD has just alerted us that they have released a BIOS fix to their motherboard partners that takes care of the issue around booting newer Linux distributions on the new Zen 2 processors...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Releases-Linux-Zen2-Fix

[Floturcocantsee]

Great, so a bunch of the Systemd bashing over this was completely unfounded and even AMD themselves acknowledged this as a bug.

[josh_walrath]

Yay! No need to wait for a new kernel.

I wonder: do mobos get OTA updates? Like, if there's a mobo sitting in a box in a warehouse that I could buy right now, would it get the new BIOS that precludes the problem? Because, otherwise... :C

[AsuMagic]

Yay! No need to wait for a new kernel.

I wonder: do mobos get OTA updates? Like, if there's a mobo sitting in a box in a warehouse that I could buy right now, would it get the new BIOS that precludes the problem? Because, otherwise... :C

You can usually update the motherboard BIOS from USB, so even if you cannot boot to your OS you will be able to fix it.
Certain AM4 manufacturers (AFAIK, at least MSI and perhaps Gigabyte) even allow flashing the BIOS with no CPU installed, which is useful for older motherboards requiring a BIOS update to be able to run newer generation CPUs.

[MastaG]

Otherwise what?
Most of these modern motherboards probably have OTA update built into their UEFI.
And if not you simply download the bios file to a fat32 formatted usb stick and update it prior to installing the OS.

[edwaleni]

AMD should work fast. Zen 2 is selling very, very well. See the lines at MicroCenter the morning of the release.

[Peter Fodrek]

Yay! No need to wait for a new kernel.

New kernels run on Zen2 but with older Systemd or this patch

It does make some sense though as outlined yesterday newer Linux 5.0~5.2 kernels do boot on older Ubuntu 18.04 LTS era distributions, which are on older systemd releases. There is a change in the latest systemd that does help that was merged in May to eat bad RdRand values on AMD CPUs.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ryzen-3K-RdRand-Systemd-Maybe

Just do not use System Debug (or SystemD bug ) )

[Veerappan]

I'm assuming that this might also be fixable via updated microcode in the kernel/initrd...

[rene]

IMHO the vendors should disclose technical details of bugs in general, and especially of such security sensitive instructions specifically. How should we trust such CPUs without understanding what is going on here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoyxwkglSUY

[AsuMagic]

I'm assuming that this might also be fixable via updated microcode in the kernel/initrd...

You can't really understand what is going on under there nor you can check without having an open microcode, IMO (which will likely never happen on any x86 system). And even then you can't be certain.