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March 28, 2018 — 12:50

Author: silver Category: hardware linux windows Comments: Off

BITS

Tool from Intel called “BIOS Implementation Test Suite” that can do several things including handling microcode:
– https://biosbits.org
– https://github.com/biosbits/bits
– https://github.com/mkorthof/bits

Linux

load/update microcode using pkg:
- Debian
  – Intel: apt install intel-microcode iucode-tool
  – AMD: apt install amd64-microcode
  – Doc: /usr/share/doc/{intel,amd64}-microcode/README.Debian.gz
- CentOS/RH:
  – microcode_ctl
  – https://git.centos.org/summary/rpms!microcode_ctl.git
load/update intel microcode manually:
– get latest tgz from intel: see below
– backup/copy files: /lib/firmware/intel-ucode
– check kernel config: grep MICROCODE /boot/config-*
– run iucode_tool:
/usr/sbin/iucode_tool -tb -lS /lib/firmware/intel-ucode/*
– update initramfs: update-initramfs -u -k all
reloading microcode:
echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/microcode/reload
or: rmmod cpuid; modprobe cpuid
show version:
dmesg | grep microcode or: grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo
skip loading microcode on boot:
add to grub cmdline: dis_ucode_ldr

Windows

Microsoft includes certain microcode updates in Windows CPU’s. For example: KB4090007, KB3064209, KB2970215.

load/update microcode:
using a VMWare driver called “cpumcupdate”: https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vmware-cpu-microcode-update-driver
show version:
– get hwinfo64 and goto “Central Processor(s)” > “Microcode Update Revision”
– or get “Read & Write Everything” (RWEverything) from http://rweverything.com

Get Microcode