The Ryzen 3000 Boot Problem With Newer Linux Distros Might Be Due To RdRand Issue

[Hugh]

Has AMD put out an official statement yet? I absolutely expect them to fix this with a firmware/AGESA update. I'm not going to buy a Ryzen 3000 CPU if this is not fixed.

Did they do anything about the two-year-old bug with rdrand previously reported?

I don't know that the bugs are actually related. They might or might not be. This manifestation stops the initial boot. The original manifestation affects resume (I think). I don't know when systemd 240 (the version that trips up on the Ryzen 3000 rdrand bug at boot) was incorporated into distros; it seems recent based on https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...eatures-So-Far

[andre30correia]

already fixed in ubuntu 19.04

[brent]

Did they do anything about the two-year-old bug with rdrand previously reported?

I don't know that the bugs are actually related. They might or might not be. This manifestation stops the initial boot. The original manifestation affects resume (I think). I don't know when systemd 240 (the version that trips up on the Ryzen 3000 rdrand bug at boot) was incorporated into distros; it seems recent based on https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...eatures-So-Far

Well, the difference is that the old RDRAND bug only affected some systems under some conditions. It wasn't a dealbreaker like the Zen 2 RDRAND bug.

[josh_walrath]

I see this as a minor issue. This is why you never run bleeding edge software. Always stay on the oldest still supported LTS version, unless there is something in a newer version you ABSOLUTELY need.

Anything not LTS on the Ubuntu side is to be considered an unstable beta anyway.

I only just upgraded my servers from 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS when 14.04 went EOL a couple of months ago. I won't go to 18.04 LTS until 16.04 TLS goes EOL.

My desktop is still on Linux Mint 18.3, based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Unless there is some hardware or feature support you absolutely need, it is always better to hang back, and let all the issues solve themselves before you upgrade.

"Bleeding edge" is relative. By your definition, Windows is "bleeding edge" because it's a rolling release like Arch or Manjaro, with rapid deployment of bugfixes, features, and new hardware support, yet this is the cadence people have come to expect. Point release feels so stagnant.

To me, bleeding is experimental kernels. I consider 4.20 an old kernel now. How old is your kernel?

How old is your video driver?

Do you have firmwares for even last generation's GPUs? (Because nobody cares about testing on anything besides 18.04, I guess this becomes a confusing, "sweet spot" point: you want new enough to have firmwares and new drivers for support and performance, but you want old enough that bugs like the one with X570 aren't discovered. The "sweet spot" is Ubuntu 18.04's kernel and SystemD version.)

But you'd still have the old KDE lock screen which leaks what media you're playing with no option to turn it off.

You'd still have other DE bugs which weren't fixed until newer releases.

You wouldn't have WireGuard support.

Btrfs would be slower since you don't have its recent optimizations.

Worst of all, you're on Ubuntu and have to deal with PPAs, but that's orthogonal to this.

If you don't care about most or any of that, you're either an enterprise server that gained sentience or a casual computer user like my grandparents. Either way, your use case is unrelatable.

[trek]

Someone already posted good issue comments like this https://github.com/systemd/systemd/i...ment-509589902

the today's comment from the author adds real fun:

I am pretty sure we are fine with this mode of operation as long as the Linux kernel is.

written in a bug report about systemd not booting

[mattlach]

"Bleeding edge" is relative. By your definition, Windows is "bleeding edge" because it's a rolling release like Arch or Manjaro, with rapid deployment of bugfixes, features, and new hardware support, yet this is the cadence people have come to expect. Point release feels so stagnant.

And we see what a buggy awful mess Windows 10 is, so I feel like this kind of proves my point.

To me, bleeding is experimental kernels. I consider 4.20 an old kernel now. How old is your kernel?

Can't really remember. 4.15:ish maybe? it does the job great, is stable, and has backports for any major security issues. Rock solid.

How old is your video driver?

Again, why do you keep harping on irrelevant things? My video driver is whatever version Nvidia binary blob driver is the latest in the repository 16.04 LTS. It supports my hardware, is doing a great job, and is rock solid. If I really need a new GPU driver (like if I buy a newer GPU) I can always add one from the PPA's. Super simple.

Do you have firmwares for even last generation's GPUs? (Because nobody cares about testing on anything besides 18.04, I guess this becomes a confusing, "sweet spot" point: you want new enough to have firmwares and new drivers for support and performance, but you want old enough that bugs like the one with X570 aren't discovered. The "sweet spot" is Ubuntu 18.04's kernel and SystemD version.)

The sweet spot to me is as old as possible, as long as it is still supported. Only time I ever upgrade to a newer release is if my hardware isn't supported, or if support ends. IN the case of the former, I usually try manually adding newer kernels and drivers before I upgrade.

Ideally I'd have no SystemD at all, but sadly that ship has sailed. If they only could have kept Upstart alive...

Either way, I have not run into any issues of unsupported hardware, be they chipset, CPU, GPU or anything else in years.

But you'd still have the old KDE lock screen which leaks what media you're playing with no option to turn it off.

I haven't used KDE since the 90s. Gnome 2 was essentially the perfect desktop environment, and I'm liking the workalike rewrite in the form of Cinnamon.

You'd still have other DE bugs which weren't fixed until newer releases.

I don't have any bugs that affect my usage scenarios from a function performance or stability perspective. Security vulnerabilities tend to be backported, so I am not worried there.

You wouldn't have WireGuard support.

Sounds like a mostly irrelevant feature. I just googled it. I guess it is VPN? OpenVPN works fine for me.

Btrfs would be slower since you don't have its recent optimizations.

I've never bothered trying Btrfs. I'm a huge fan of ZFS though, and ZoL works great on my system. Not th elatest version mind you, but I have looked through the features list, and I don't feel like I am missing too much.

Worst of all, you're on Ubuntu and have to deal with PPAs, but that's orthogonal to this.

I consider Apt and PPAs to be one of the biggest advantages of Debian/Ubuntu/Mint. So much better than that modern Snap/Appimage/Flatpak garbage, and better than any other package manager I've used. I would not even bother trying a Linux release without Apt, and no Snap/Flatpak/Appimage distributed package will ever wind up being installed on any of my systems.

If you don't care about most or any of that, you're either an enterprise server that gained sentience or a casual computer user like my grandparents. Either way, your use case is unrelatable.

Linux == Enterprise

What do you use this stuff for? Games? Lol.

Linux is not for games. Go buy an Xbox.

I too used to have this "Linux on the Desktop becoming mainstream" dream back in the day. In time I realized how foolish I was, and now believe Linux is best kept by and for computer geeks and Enterprise users.

Adding sleek usability features and games and the likes of Snaps/AppImage/Flatpak and Kubernetes shit does nothing but drag it down, make it less useful for the people who truly like it.

[rbmorse]

already fixed in ubuntu 19.04

What was fixed? The two year old bug or the new Ryzen hiccup?

[josh_walrath]

And we see what a buggy awful mess Windows 10 is, so I feel like this kind of proves my point.



Can't really remember. 4.15:ish maybe? it does the job great, is stable, and has backports for any major security issues. Rock solid.



Again, why do you keep harping on irrelevant things? My video driver is whatever version Nvidia binary blob driver is the latest in the repository 16.04 LTS. It supports my hardware, is doing a great job, and is rock solid. If I really need a new GPU driver (like if I buy a newer GPU) I can always add one from the PPA's. Super simple.



The sweet spot to me is as old as possible, as long as it is still supported. Only time I ever upgrade to a newer release is if my hardware isn't supported, or if support ends. IN the case of the former, I usually try manually adding newer kernels and drivers before I upgrade.

Ideally I'd have no SystemD at all, but sadly that ship has sailed. If they only could have kept Upstart alive...

Either way, I have not run into any issues of unsupported hardware, be they chipset, CPU, GPU or anything else in years.



I haven't used KDE since the 90s. Gnome 2 was essentially the perfect desktop environment, and I'm liking the workalike rewrite in the form of Cinnamon.



I don't have any bugs that affect my usage scenarios from a function performance or stability perspective. Security vulnerabilities tend to be backported, so I am not worried there.



Sounds like a mostly irrelevant feature. I just googled it. I guess it is VPN? OpenVPN works fine for me.



I've never bothered trying Btrfs. I'm a huge fan of ZFS though, and ZoL works great on my system. Not th elatest version mind you, but I have looked through the features list, and I don't feel like I am missing too much.



I consider Apt and PPAs to be one of the biggest advantages of Debian/Ubuntu/Mint. So much better than that modern Snap/Appimage/Flatpak garbage, and better than any other package manager I've used. I would not even bother trying a Linux release without Apt, and no Snap/Flatpak/Appimage distributed package will ever wind up being installed on any of my systems.



Linux == Enterprise

What do you use this stuff for? Games? Lol.

Linux is not for games. Go buy an Xbox.

I too used to have this "Linux on the Desktop becoming mainstream" dream back in the day. In time I realized how foolish I was, and now believe Linux is best kept by and for computer geeks and Enterprise users.

Adding sleek usability features and games and the likes of Snaps/AppImage/Flatpak and Kubernetes shit does nothing but drag it down, make it less useful for the people who truly like it.

10/10 unironic parody.

Have you considered BSD?

[Britoid]

I consider Apt and PPAs to be one of the biggest advantages of Debian/Ubuntu/Mint. So much better than that modern Snap/Appimage/Flatpak garbage, and better than any other package manager I've used. I would not even bother trying a Linux release without Apt, and no Snap/Flatpak/Appimage distributed package will ever wind up being installed on any of my systems.

1) dpkg/apt is by far not the best package manager. 2) ppas are a terrible form of desktop software distribution, especially proprietary. deb scripts can run what they want at install and ppas can replace any package in your system.

[Britoid]

"Bleeding edge" is relative. By your definition, Windows is "bleeding edge" because it's a rolling release like Arch or Manjaro, with rapid deployment of bugfixes, features, and new hardware support, yet this is the cadence people have come to expect. Point release feels so stagnant.

Yeh, Windows is certainly not rolling release. The insider channel I guess is kinda rolling give a few weeks, but Windows doesn't do packages and updates as much as the system as it needs to go in one go.