Edit File: 06-4f-01_readme
Intel Broadwell-EP/EX (BDX-ML B/M/R0, family 6, model 79, stepping 1) has issues with microcode update that may lead to a system hang; while some changes to the Linux kernel have been made in an attempt to address these issues, they were not eliminated, so a possibility of unstable system behaviour after a microcode update performed on a running system is still present even on a kernels that contain aforementioned changes. As a result, microcode update for this CPU model has been disabled by default. For the reference, kernel versions for the respective RHEL minor versions that contain the aforementioned changes, are listed below: * Upstream/RHEL 8: kernel-4.17.0 or newer; * RHEL 7.6 onwards: kernel-3.10.0-894 or newer; * RHEL 7.5.z: kernel-3.10.0-862.6.1 or newer; * RHEL 7.4.z: kernel-3.10.0-693.35.1 or newer; * RHEL 7.3.z: kernel-3.10.0-514.52.1 or newer; * RHEL 7.2.z: kernel-3.10.0-327.70.1 or newer. Please contact you system vendor for a BIOS/firmware update that contains the latest microcode version. For the information regarding microcode versions required for mitigating specific side-channel cache attacks, please refer to the following knowledge base articles: * CVE-2017-5715 ("Spectre"): https://access.redhat.com/articles/3436091 * CVE-2018-3639 ("Speculative Store Bypass"): https://access.redhat.com/articles/3540901 * CVE-2018-3620, CVE-2018-3646 ("L1 Terminal Fault Attack"): https://access.redhat.com/articles/3562741 * CVE-2018-12130, CVE-2018-12126, CVE-2018-12127, and CVE-2019-11091 ("Microarchitectural Data Sampling"): https://access.redhat.com/articles/4138151 * CVE-2020-24489 (VT-d-related Privilege Escalation), CVE-2020-24511 (Improper Isolation of Shared Resources), CVE-2020-24512 (Observable Timing Discrepancy), CVE-2020-24513 (Information Disclosure on Some Intel Atom Processors): https://access.redhat.com/articles/6101171 The information regarding enforcing microcode load is provided below. For enforcing addition of this microcode to the firmware directory for a specific kernel, where it is available for a late microcode update, please create a file "force-late-intel-06-4f-01" inside /lib/firmware/<kernel_version> directory and run "/usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode": touch /lib/firmware/3.10.0-862.9.1/force-late-intel-06-4f-01 /usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode After that, it is possible to perform a late microcode update by executing "/usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/reload_microcode" or by writing value "1" to "/sys/devices/system/cpu/microcode/reload" directly. For enforcing addition of this microcode to firmware directories for all kernels, please create a file "/etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats/force-late-intel-06-4f-01" and run "/usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode": mkdir -p /etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats touch /etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats/force-late-intel-06-4f-01 /usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode For enforcing early load of this microcode for a specific kernel, please create a file "force-early-intel-06-4f-01" inside "/lib/firmware/<kernel_version>" directory and run "dracut -f --kver <kernel_version>": touch /lib/firmware/3.10.0-862.9.1/force-early-intel-06-4f-01 dracut -f --kver 3.10.0-862.9.1 For enforcing early load of this microcode for all kernels, please create a file "/etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats/force-early-intel-06-4f-01" and run dracut -f --regenerate-all: mkdir -p /etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats touch /etc/microcode_ctl/ucode_with_caveats/force-early-intel-06-4f-01 dracut -f --regenerate-all If you want to avoid removal of the microcode file during cleanup performed by /usr/libexec/microcode_ctl/update_ucode, please remove the corresponding readme file (/lib/firmware/<kernel_version>/readme-intel-06-4f-01). Please refer to /usr/share/doc/microcode_ctl/README.caveats for additional information.