[arch-releng] Changes for early microcode

[Christian Hesse]

Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi <vmlinuz386 at gmail.com> on Wed, 2014/10/29 09:41:
> On 10/29/2014 09:35 AM, Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi wrote:
> > On 10/29/2014 08:31 AM, Christian Hesse wrote:
> >> Hello everybody,
> >>
> >> the official ISO file includes intel-ucode, which requires changes to the
> >> bootloader for early microcode. Will we see changes before November
> >> release?
> >>
> > 
> > I see al least two options:
> > 
> > (1) Write two syslinux/gummiboot entries per each current entry,
> > something like "start archlinux for Intel machine (except virtualized
> > enviroment)", "start archlinux for non-Intel machine".
> > 
> > (2) Always load intel-ucode.img for all enviroments, should be ignored
> > in cases where does not care.
> 
> In case (2), for keep it simple, we can unpack then intel-ucode.img and
> just always add the .bin inside archiso.img
> 
> I guess, should work. Please confirm, I do not have Intel CPU.

That does not work. Not sure why the microcode is ignored, but I could not
updated this way.

What works is concatenating the initramfs images. Something like

# cat intel-ucode.img initramfs-linux.img > archiso.img

works perfectly. This is the method described upstream [0].

[0] https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/x86/early-microcode.txt
-- 
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"CX:;",b;for(a/*    Chris           get my mail address:    */=0;b=c[a++];)
putchar(b-1/(/*               gcc -o sig sig.c && ./sig    */b/42*2-3)*42);}
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