Debian Warns Of Hyper Threading Issue With Intel Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Debian Warns Of Hyper Threading Issue With Intel Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs

The Debian project is warning Intel Skylake and Kaby Lake users to disable Hyper Threading (HT) on their CPUs due to a possible issue affecting those with out-of-date microcode...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-HT-Bug-KBL095

[tildearrow]

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Typos:

could "dangerously misbehave" when Hyper THreading is enabled.

same physical processor are ctive

(the original doc doesn't have the typo)

[MaxToTheMax]

Wow, thanks for the heads up! The updated intel-microcode package they recommend doesn't exist in the Mint 18/Ubuntu repos yet, but I can confirm that with the "iucode-tool" dependency installed, the .deb package from debian installed just fine on Mint 18. Haven't rebooted yet though, running a full backup before I do.

[arjan_intel]

https://downloadmirror.intel.com/267...e-20170511.tgz and install with microcode... the "ucode-tool" is no longer needed, Intel provides the microcode in native linux format nowadays....

[dungeon]

Debian should disable hyperthreading by default for Intel SK/KB then... since this is unofficial info as non-free is not part of the distro, blah, blah.

[defaultUser]

Debian should disable hyperthreading by default for Intel SK/KB then... since this is unofficial info as non-free is not part of the distro, blah, blah.

This is controlled by BIOS option...

[drohm]

Is this limited to just Debian? What about other platforms? Only reason I ask is because the fix is outside the OS.

[tildearrow]

Is this limited to just Debian? What about other platforms? Only reason I ask is because the fix is outside the OS.

No, it is not. It affects all OSes... The article is in the "Intel" category.

[dungeon]

Is this limited to just Debian? What about other platforms? Only reason I ask is because the fix is outside the OS.

Nope not Debian only, it can affects any OS it seems:

Please note that the defect can potentially affect any operating system (it is not restricted to Debian, and it is not restricted to Linux-based systems). It can be either avoided (by disabling hyper-threading), or fixed (by updating the processor microcode).

[MaxToTheMax]

This is controlled by BIOS option...

I bet you could set those options on at least some motherboards using UEFI flags, which you can do while booted. Have to reboot to apply it though.