Arch Linux @lemmy.ml d3Xt3r @lemmy.nz 10 mo. ago

[PSA] Arch Linux News: mkinitcpio hook migration and early microcode

archlinux.org Arch Linux - News: mkinitcpio hook migration and early microcode

With the release of mkinitcpio v38, several hooks previously provided by Arch packages have been moved to the mkinitcpio upstream project. The hooks are: systemd, udev, encrypt, sd-encrypt, lvm2 and mdadm_udev.

To ensure no breakage of users' setup occurs, temporary conflicts have been introduced into the respective packages to prevent installing packages that are no longer compatible.

The following packages needs to be upgraded together:

mkinitcpio 38-3

systemd 255.4-2

lvm2 2.03.23-3

mdadm 4.3-2

cryptsetup 2.7.0-3

Please note that the mkinitcpio flag --microcode, and the microcode option in the preset files, has been deprecated in favour of a new microcode hook. This also allows you to drop the microcode initrd lines from your boot configuration as they are now packed together with the main initramfs image.

Arch Linux @programming.dev Mac @programming.dev 9 mo. ago

mkinitcpio hook migration and early microcode

archlinux.org /news/mkinitcpio-hook-migration-and-early-microcode/

15 comments

So basically:

Update your system, don't reboot yet

mkinitcpio.conf --> make sure you have microcode after the autodetect in the HOOKS line

/etc/mkinitcpio.d/<kernel>.preset --> remove the line ALL_microcode=(/boot/*-ucode.img)

systemd-boot users: arch.conf --> remove or comment out the initrd /amd-ucode.img (or intel-ucode.img) line

Run sudo mkinitcpio -p <kernel> to generate your new initrd, and then reboot

Optional: run grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo before and after the reboot to verify that your microcode version hasn't changed after the reboot - which means that the new microcode loading method is working correctly.

On a tangential note, the above is a perfect example of why I don't recommend Arch (and so-called "easy" derivatives like EndeavourOS) for newbies (ie people who don't RTFM / keep up with Arch news / inspect their .pacnew files etc). Feel free to link this post in your future internet arguments. :)
- On a tangential note, the above is a perfect example of why I don’t recommend Arch
  
  😡
  
  ...for newbies
  
  Oh, right. Carry on.
- Other reason is that a newbie (or even advanced user, but someone digging in more) won't even benefit from Arch.
  
  I personally cannot imagine using anything other than Arch, but no way I am going to recommend it for someone who don't know what a bootloader is. But recommending to install it in VM is good tho, teaches a lot.
- I might have missed something VERY obvious - I did ~~skim through~~ check the mkinitcpio, grub and microcode wikipages - but just merging .pacnew to current config (mkinitcpio, grub defaults), mkinitcpio -p linux and grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg, newly created grub.conf still had intel-ucode on the initrd -line. This happened on both machines I have atm.
  
  Arch forums had the magic words here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=2154769#p2154769
  
  Add this line to /etc/default/grub then regenerate grub.cfg:
  
  GRUB_EARLY_INITRD_LINUX_STOCK=''
  
  and then my grub.cfg generated fine without the intel-ucode, and after rebooting dmesg seems to indicate the new method works fine
  
  [ 0.314430] microcode: Current revision: 0x0000002f [ 0.314433] microcode: Updated early from: 0x00000014
  
  Always something :P
- As I read the announcement it sounds like you only need to do changes if you setup early-microcode stuff. So if you have a completely standard install, no changes would be needed other than updating packages.
  
  Am I wrong in this?
  
  It's the other way round. Early-loading is the default and in fact late-loading doesn't even work on stock Arch kernels, because it requires the kernel to be built with that config option enabled. So any "standard" install would be taking about early-loading microcode, so this should be applicable to you as well.
- I was trying to do this, didn't find the directory, figured out that mkinitcpio wasn't installed. Turns out EndeavourOS set up dracut which means I don't even have to do this. (Hides behind purple SDDM theme)
- In addition to what @Malix@sopuli.xyz said about grub, I didn't need to edit kernel.preset files, but I did need to have the encrypt hook, and /crypto_keyfile.bin, in files, and crc32c-intel (only on my intel machine, just crc32c on my amd machine) in modules.
  
  https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mkinitcpio#HOOKS
- Could you please elaborate on the full path for the arch.conf file? I looked at /usr/share/systemd/bootctl/arch.conf and there was no initrd /amd-ucode.img (or intel-ucode.img) line, instead all I had was initrd /initramfs-linux.img
  
  Furthermore, for step 3 I didnt have any entry starting with ALL_microcode=
  
  I have yet to do step 5 fyi. Thank you
  
  Could you please elaborate on the full path for the arch.conf file?
  
  Could be called something else, but it should be in /boot/loader/entries/. But if you don't have the initrd /amd-ucode.img line then that's fine, you don't need to do anything. Same with step 3, if you don't have the ALL_microcode line you can ignore that step.
- Step 3 is optional. mkinitcpio will just issue a warning, and any kernel packages you have installed should eventually update their presets.

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