Arch Linux

DrKillPatient

Member

Registered: 2011-07-28

Posts: 85

[SOLVED] Do microcode updates pose any possibility of harm?

I have a Macbook 11,1 (haswell processor) and I see that the wiki page recommends installing intel-ucode for microcode updates. I am not familiar with microcode; to me it sounds somewhat like firmware or BIOS. With that said, is it possible that updates provided by intel-ucode (or power failure during the updates) can brick my system? Or are they non-persistent? The wiki article isn't clear either way — I think the latter is the case but I'd like to be sure before I install the package.

Last edited by DrKillPatient (2016-05-14 05:22:52)

eschwartz

Fellow

Registered: 2014-08-08

Posts: 4,097

Re: [SOLVED] Do microcode updates pose any possibility of harm?

Microcode updates can be done in two ways:

By updating the BIOS (always risky).
By installing a package (intel-ucode) into the operating system which patches the running microcode during early boot (pretty darn safe).

Last edited by eschwartz (2016-05-12 02:04:36)

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,797

Re: [SOLVED] Do microcode updates pose any possibility of harm?

I avoid "Me too" posts, but in this case I concur that the process you linked will not cause anything bad to happen, is transient, and safe.

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