Arch Linux

k2_8191

Member

Registered: 2012-10-18

Posts: 20

Is Installing intel-ucode on VM unintended?

Hi all,

After troubleshooting a boot-time hang of my Virtualbox VM (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=224012),
it made me think that installing intel-ucode package on VM is not intended even if the host processor is Intel.

Is this true? I thought there could be a situation that installing intel-ucode could be perfectly fine but there are some issues in either intel-ucode, linux or Virtualbox.

Last edited by k2_8191 (2017-03-25 02:46:34)

mich41

Member

Registered: 2012-06-22

Posts: 796

Re: Is Installing intel-ucode on VM unintended?

Microcode isn't virtualized, there is only one and it's used by the host and all VMs. If the host updates it, all VMs will have it updated too.

Furthermore, since microcode is shared, in my opinion attempts to update it from inside VMs should cause errors or be ignored, though it's possible that some VM vendor may surprise me here