Ubuntu 14.04 LTS releases AMD microcode firmware to resolve Boot Failures issues
Last month, Canonical released AMD microcode firmware updates for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark), Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) to resolve Spectre vulnerabilities.
However, it is reported that this updated processor microcode firmware has caused some computers to fail to boot. Canonical has apologized for this issue and released a patch to fix the fallback, and urged users to update their computers immediately.
“USN-3690-1 provided updated microcode for AMD processors to address CVE-2017-5715 (aka Spectre). Unfortunately, the update caused some systems to fail to boot. This update reverts the update for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. We apologize for the inconvenience,” said Canonical in the security advisory.
At present, it seems that only Ubuntu 14.04 LTS users are affected, including a series of derivative versions such as Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu and so on. To solve this problem, Canonical urged Ubuntu 14.04 LTS users to update the AMD microcode firmware to the amd64-microcode-3.20180524.1~ubuntu0.14.04.2+really20130710.1 package, which is now available in the official software library.
Users can update by referring to the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades and remember to restart your computer after installing the new microcode version.
