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#1 2020-09-25 14:55:23

natervance
Member
Registered: 2017-04-20
Posts: 52

[SOLVED] Microcode updates seem not to apply, and system freezing

Hi all,

I have a rather old AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ (as reported by lscpu) that has been giving me trouble - the system wakes from a suspend-to-ram a bit less than 50% of the time (something internal clicks a few times if it doesn't), and about once per day the entire system freezes and I have to hard-reboot (not even caps/numlock work).

After swapping the default kernel for linux-lts and back again, doing a memtest (9 passes with 0 errors), swapping hard drives, and investigating BIOS updates (a newer version seems to have been released in 2008, but is no longer available), I'm barking up the CPU tree. I installed amd-ucode, updated grub.cfg (relevant line reads "initrd /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img"), and rebooted, but dmesg | grep microcode yields nothing.

Another symptom of my ancient CPU: uname -p yields "unknown", whereas on other machines it yields the same identification as lscpu. Maybe related?

I have not found any correlation between system stress and the freezes. Any help on the microcode aspect of my crusade would be great, and any insight into the underlying freezing problem would be even better!

dmesg: https://pastebin.com/q0DW83f4
lscpu:

Architecture:                    x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):                  32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:                      Little Endian
Address sizes:                   40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s):                          2
On-line CPU(s) list:             0,1
Thread(s) per core:              1
Core(s) per socket:              2
Socket(s):                       1
NUMA node(s):                    1
Vendor ID:                       AuthenticAMD
CPU family:                      15
Model:                           107
Model name:                      AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+
Stepping:                        1
CPU MHz:                         2600.000
CPU max MHz:                     2600.0000
CPU min MHz:                     1000.0000
BogoMIPS:                        5226.88
Virtualization:                  AMD-V
L1d cache:                       128 KiB
L1i cache:                       128 KiB
L2 cache:                        1 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s):               0,1
Vulnerability Itlb multihit:     Not affected
Vulnerability L1tf:              Not affected
Vulnerability Mds:               Not affected
Vulnerability Meltdown:          Not affected
Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Not affected
Vulnerability Spectre v1:        Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2:        Mitigation; Full AMD retpoline, STIBP disabled, RSB filling
Vulnerability Srbds:             Not affected
Vulnerability Tsx async abort:   Not affected
Flags:                           fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx
                                  fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow rep_good nopl
                                  cpuid extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch
                                  vmmcall lbrv

lspci -k:

00:00.0 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a1)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
00:01.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 LPC Bridge (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
00:01.1 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SMBus (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: nForce2_smbus
	Kernel modules: i2c_nforce2
00:01.2 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Memory Controller (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
00:02.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 USB 1.1 Controller (rev a3)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: ohci-pci
	Kernel modules: ohci_pci
00:02.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 USB 2.0 Controller (rev a3)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: ehci-pci
	Kernel modules: ehci_pci
00:04.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI bridge (rev a1)
00:05.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
	Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel
00:06.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 IDE (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: pata_amd
	Kernel modules: pata_amd, pata_acpi, ata_generic
00:07.0 Bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 Ethernet (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: forcedeth
	Kernel modules: forcedeth
00:08.0 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: sata_nv
	Kernel modules: sata_nv, pata_acpi, ata_generic
00:08.1 IDE interface: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 SATA Controller (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: sata_nv
	Kernel modules: sata_nv, pata_acpi, ata_generic
00:09.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 PCI Express bridge (rev a2)
	Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
	Kernel driver in use: k8temp
	Kernel modules: k8temp
01:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)] IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller (rev 80)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2a61
	Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci
	Kernel modules: firewire_ohci
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 / R5 230 OEM]
	Subsystem: XFX Pine Group Inc. Device 5230
	Kernel driver in use: radeon
	Kernel modules: radeon
02:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6450 / 7450/8450/8490 OEM / R5 230/235/235X OEM]
	Subsystem: XFX Pine Group Inc. Device aa98
	Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
	Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel

Last edited by natervance (2020-09-26 11:42:39)

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#2 2020-09-25 15:40:33

Ropid
Member
Registered: 2015-03-09
Posts: 1,069

Re: [SOLVED] Microcode updates seem not to apply, and system freezing

Some random ideas:

After you've tested the RAM and found out that it's fine, there's then the motherboard, the PSU, and the CPU left to test. Testing CPU and motherboard feels hopeless, but PSU would be something you could try testing (maybe you have access to a second PC that you could use for parts for a day or two).

About seeing if it's the kernel or not, I'd try running memtest86 for a very long time (set the cycles to "999" in its settings). If that runs fine, that would hopefully mean that everything about CPU and motherboard and PSU is fine.

I had a PC where completely disconnecting and reconnecting everything fixed the strange issues that it had. When I did that, I also tried cleaning all contacts that were simple to clean, for example I rubbed gently on the contacts of the memory sticks before putting them back into their slots.

That "uname -p" = "unknown" thing is the same here on a modern system. Maybe it's a distro thing and those other machines you are looking at are not using Arch?

About microcode, maybe there's just no way to update it from the OS on your system? There's always a message from a "Microcode Update Driver" thingy in the dmesg output here, even if the amd-ucode.img or intel-ucode.img files are missing. This is on Intel and AMD systems from 2012 and 2018.

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#3 2020-09-26 06:19:55

Pillgar
Member
Registered: 2017-07-05
Posts: 41

Re: [SOLVED] Microcode updates seem not to apply, and system freezing

I wouldn't completely rule out bad ram just yet.  From my own recent personal experience, last 2x8gb kit passed memtest for 8 passes, but failed prime95 blend in about 10 minutes.  Maybe give it a go for about an hour or two.  The test should stop automatically if an error is detected.  uname -p yields "unknown" for my 10700k also.

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#4 2020-09-26 10:43:03

euromatlox
Member
Registered: 2017-02-10
Posts: 110

Re: [SOLVED] Microcode updates seem not to apply, and system freezing

Usually BIOSes can be found, using good web search string, in many sites, from russian language pages etc (use translate feature in Chrome). It's no miracle that official manufacturer has removed BIOS from own pages, if still in business. Must remember that it's risky to update BIOS, must be very carefully made, double check that BIOS file is correct one. If using floppy disk drive, must be absolute sure that floppy is in perfect condition. Also must check that there are no current settings in BIOS to prevent updates. It's always own decision, to update BIOS or not. Personally I have not had any problems with my computer equipment when updating BIOS.

If bad RAM suspected, it's better check that before considering any BIOS update.

Last edited by euromatlox (2020-09-26 10:50:45)

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#5 2020-09-26 11:41:51

natervance
Member
Registered: 2017-04-20
Posts: 52

Re: [SOLVED] Microcode updates seem not to apply, and system freezing

Ropid wrote:

I also tried cleaning all contacts that were simple to clean, for example I rubbed gently on the contacts of the memory sticks before putting them back into their slots.

Earlier in this process I had removed and re-inserted the RAM, but after this advice I rubbed the contacts of the RAM with a cloth before re-inserting them. I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but my system has been stable since (fingers crossed).

Pillgar wrote:

uname -p yields "unknown" for my 10700k also.

I had tested uname -p on a gentoo system, and that's my bad. The arch live install medium on that system also yields "unknown".

euromatlox wrote:

If bad RAM suspected, it's better check that before considering any BIOS update.

Good call. I think I'll delay on the BIOS update for now!

Microcode updates not receiving mention in dmesg remains a mystery to me, but I think the advice to double-check the RAM has solved my problem. I'll mark this as resolved.

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