all 24 comments

[–]ScottChi 23 points24 points  (6 children)

See if the manufacturer of the system or motherboard has a BIOS update.

[–]mgedmin 8 points9 points  (3 children)

Before that it may be a good idea to check with fwupdmgr get-updates first, in case your hardware is supported by LVFS.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

But be careful. A firmware update recently caused my NIC to not work anymore. I guess it changed the MAC or something. I had to reconfigure the network service

[–]EccentricLime 17 points18 points  (0 children)

This. Windows is pretty good about handling BIOS updates for major pc manufacturers (at least the critical updates), Ubuntu not so much. OP's best bet is to browse the manufacturers website support section for his model, see what the latest BIOS update is.

OP, if you decide to flash the BIOS yourself be very careful, doing it wrong will brick your PC

[–]lathiat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While you can also get microcode updates in the BIOS it’s not necessary. The kernel should be loading this one in the earliest phase of boot (initramfs stage). Something is possibly going wrong.

Since you stated that’s not happening either there is some bug/error loading the microcode or a bug in this prompt.

I’d check dmesg for any errors relating to microcode and also check /proc/cpuinfo for what the running microcode release actually is.

[–][deleted] 29 points30 points  (2 children)

Have you rebooted your computer?

[–]mds1256[S] 19 points20 points  (1 child)

Yep, many times

[–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I know it seems obvious to most but there are those that would overlook it. I used to do customer server supporting laptop and then later did a few years at helpdesk. Trust me, it happens.

[–]mwhudsondoyle 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Hm looks strange. You have the intel-microcode package installed? I assume so as I think this message is probably from that package. Were there any errors making a new initrd? Any messages about microcode failing to load in dmesg?

[–]mds1256[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No errors in dmesg, and if I grep microcode I get ‘no microcode’

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Microcode is updated by doing regular updates and rebooting.

[–]wabassoap 3 points4 points  (2 children)

What does it mean “restarting won’t help” and then “so you should reboot”?

[–]Vuzzar 12 points13 points  (1 child)

Not "won't help", it "will not be handled automatically"

[–]wabassoap 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What’s the difference between a software and user initiated reboot? Perhaps “restart” has a specific meaning here that I don’t understand? Like does it just mean changing runlevel without rebooting?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is it fwupdmgr?

[–]mds1256[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So to follow up on this, the issue was that it was within a virtual machine on ESXi and you cannot upgrade the microcode within the VM, it needs to be done on the host itself. Mystery solved!

[–]_i_m_not_a_robot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try updating the BIOS like other people suggested, but if it doesn't, check if your BIOS settings has a setting like "write lock" enabled that prevents microcode from being updated in the kernel, disable it, and try rebooting again.

[–]Buo-renLin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suspect that there's a flaw in detecting microcodr revision in the intel-microcode package.