Microcode in ROM is not loaded with X60s

[Masanori Ogino]

Dear Coreboot developers,

I installed Coreboot with ThinkPad X60s and Debian 9 and they run
successfully, but I observe a weird behavior.

Even though I had enabled blob for microcode update, the system seems
to run without it. I saw the following message in dmesg:
(I think this is not fatal since this is related to temperature
monitoring, though.)
> coretemp: Errata AE18 not fixed, update BIOS or microcode of the CPU!

For comparison, I had installed `intel-microcode` package to the
system and then the message disappeared.

Is this intended behavior, misconfiguration, or a real bug?

For reference, I uploaded the content of /proc/cpuinfo before and
after the installation of `intel-microcode` package:
https://gist.github.com/omasanori/4a1316bd78d95069f287431f5bd3a176

Also, I uploaded a report to board-status:
https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/board-status.git/commit/?id=af91ae4946fec9e...

(I had also tried to install FreeBSD 12.0 and OpenBSD 6.4 but both of
their installers failed to boot just after the kernel is loaded and
located. I am not sure if this is related to this or not.)

Best regards,
Masanori

[Ivan Ivanov]

Good day Masanori,

Please tell, do you observe the same results with more fresh Linux
distributions?
It is known that Debian usually contains the outdated packages and
some of the problems there - may have already been fixed.
Try running something like the latest Void Linux (very nice fast
unique Linux distro without SystemD and really fresh packages,
e.g. it has Linux kernel 4.19 and intel-ucode20180807 package) - maybe
without the installation but just as a LiveUSB.
Here is how to install a package there, e.g. that microcode package
above - https://voidlinux.org/usage/xbps/#xbps-install1

While suggesting the instructions above I am assuming that you have
already made sure that your coreboot
has indeed checked out the 3rdparty/blobs repository where the blobs
are residing. If not, please check the output of

ls -al ./path_to_your_coreboot/3rdparty/blobs

Best regards,
Ivan Ivanov

вс, 24 февр. 2019 г. в 21:53, Masanori Ogino :
> Dear Coreboot developers,
>
> I installed Coreboot with ThinkPad X60s and Debian 9 and they run
> successfully, but I observe a weird behavior.
>
> Even though I had enabled blob for microcode update, the system seems
> to run without it. I saw the following message in dmesg:
> (I think this is not fatal since this is related to temperature
> monitoring, though.)
> > coretemp: Errata AE18 not fixed, update BIOS or microcode of the CPU!
>
> For comparison, I had installed `intel-microcode` package to the
> system and then the message disappeared.
>
> Is this intended behavior, misconfiguration, or a real bug?
>
> For reference, I uploaded the content of /proc/cpuinfo before and
> after the installation of `intel-microcode` package:
> https://gist.github.com/omasanori/4a1316bd78d95069f287431f5bd3a176
>
> Also, I uploaded a report to board-status:
> https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/board-status.git/commit/?id=af91ae4946fec9e...
>
> (I had also tried to install FreeBSD 12.0 and OpenBSD 6.4 but both of
> their installers failed to boot just after the kernel is loaded and
> located. I am not sure if this is related to this or not.)
>
> Best regards,
> Masanori

[Masanori Ogino]

Dear Ivan,

On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 12:26 AM Ivan Ivanov  wrote:
> Please tell, do you observe the same results with more fresh Linux
> distributions?
> It is known that Debian usually contains the outdated packages and
> some of the problems there - may have already been fixed.
> Try running something like the latest Void Linux (very nice fast
> unique Linux distro without SystemD and really fresh packages,
> e.g. it has Linux kernel 4.19 and intel-ucode20180807 package) - maybe
> without the installation but just as a LiveUSB.
> Here is how to install a package there, e.g. that microcode package
> above - https://voidlinux.org/usage/xbps/#xbps-install1

Thank you for your suggestion.
Since the version of `intel-microcode` in Debian 9 is 20180807a that
is the same as `intel-ucode` in Arch, I guess the microcode itself is
not outdated at least.
Anyway, I had checked Void Linux's site, and it looks interesting to
me so I will give it a try.
> While suggesting the instructions above I am assuming that you have
> already made sure that your coreboot
> has indeed checked out the 3rdparty/blobs repository where the blobs
> are residing. If not, please check the output of

I had followed the instructions in
https://www.coreboot.org/Build_HOWTO, so 3rdparty submodules are
checked out for sure in a lengthy coffee break. :-)

Best regards,
Masanori

[Masanori Ogino]

The patches for addressing the problem
https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/31664 and
https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/31665 ware landed in master.
Thank you!

On Sun, Feb 24, 2019 at 9:06 PM Masanori Ogino  wrote:
> Dear Coreboot developers,
>
> I installed Coreboot with ThinkPad X60s and Debian 9 and they run
> successfully, but I observe a weird behavior.
>
> Even though I had enabled blob for microcode update, the system seems
> to run without it. I saw the following message in dmesg:
> (I think this is not fatal since this is related to temperature
> monitoring, though.)
> > coretemp: Errata AE18 not fixed, update BIOS or microcode of the CPU!
>
> For comparison, I had installed `intel-microcode` package to the
> system and then the message disappeared.
>
> Is this intended behavior, misconfiguration, or a real bug?
>
> For reference, I uploaded the content of /proc/cpuinfo before and
> after the installation of `intel-microcode` package:
> https://gist.github.com/omasanori/4a1316bd78d95069f287431f5bd3a176
>
> Also, I uploaded a report to board-status:
> https://review.coreboot.org/cgit/board-status.git/commit/?id=af91ae4946fec9e...
>
> (I had also tried to install FreeBSD 12.0 and OpenBSD 6.4 but both of
> their installers failed to boot just after the kernel is loaded and
> located. I am not sure if this is related to this or not.)
>
> Best regards,
> Masanori