Intel firmware arch linux

Microcode

Processor manufacturers release stability and security updates to the processor microcode. These updates provide bug fixes that can be critical to the stability of your system. Without them, you may experience spurious crashes or unexpected system halts that can be difficult to track down.

All users with an AMD or Intel CPU should install the microcode updates to ensure system stability.

Microcode updates are usually shipped with the motherboard’s firmware and applied during firmware initialization. Since OEMs might not release firmware updates in a timely fashion and old systems do not get new firmware updates at all, the ability to apply CPU microcode updates during boot was added to the Linux kernel. The Linux microcode loader supports three loading methods:

1. Early loading updates the microcode very early during boot, before the initramfs stage, so it is the preferred method. This is mandatory for CPUs with severe hardware bugs, like the Intel Haswell and Broadwell processor families.
2. Late loading updates the microcode after booting which could be too late since the CPU might have already tried to use a bugged instruction set. Even if already using early loading, late loading can still be used to apply a newer microcode update without needing to reboot.
3. Built-in microcode can be compiled into the kernel that is then applied by the early loader.

Contents

Early loading

Installation

Depending on the processor, install the following package:

Microcode must be loaded by the boot loader. Because of the wide variability in users’ early-boot configuration, microcode updates may not be triggered automatically by Arch’s default configuration. Many AUR kernels have followed the path of the official Arch kernels in this regard.

These updates must be enabled by adding /boot/amd-ucode.img or /boot/intel-ucode.img as the first initrd in the bootloader config file. This is before the normal initrd file. See below for instructions for common bootloaders.

In the following sections replace cpu_manufacturer with your CPU manufacturer, i.e. amd or intel .

Configuration

This article or section needs expansion.

Enabling early microcode loading in custom kernels

In order for early loading to work in custom kernels, «CPU microcode loading support» needs to be compiled into the kernel, not compiled as a module. This will enable the «Early load microcode» prompt which should be set to Y .

grub-mkconfig will automatically detect the microcode update and configure GRUB appropriately. After installing the microcode package, regenerate the GRUB config to activate loading the microcode update by running:

Alternatively, users that manage their GRUB config file manually can add /boot/cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img (or /cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img if /boot is a separate partition) as follows:

Repeat it for each menu entry.

systemd-boot

Use the initrd option to load the microcode, before the initial ramdisk, as follows:

The latest microcode cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img must be available at boot time in your EFI system partition (ESP). The ESP must be mounted as /boot in order to have the microcode updated every time amd-ucode or intel-ucode is updated. Otherwise, copy /boot/cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img to your ESP at every update of the microcode package.

Unified kernel images

For unified kernel images, first generate the initrd to integrate by creating a new one as follows:

EFISTUB

Append two initrd= options:

rEFInd

Edit boot options in /boot/refind_linux.conf and add initrd=boot\cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img (or initrd=cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img if /boot is a separate partition) as the first initramfs. For example:

Users employing manual stanzas in esp/EFI/refind/refind.conf to define the kernels should simply add initrd=boot\cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img (or initrd=cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img if /boot is a separate partition) as required to the options line, and not in the main part of the stanza. E.g.:

Syslinux

Multiple initrd’s can be separated by commas in /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg :

LILO and potentially other old bootloaders do not support multiple initrd images. In that case, cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img and initramfs-linux.img will have to be merged into one image.

To merge both images into one image named initramfs-merged.img , the following command can be used:

Now, edit /etc/lilo.conf to load the new image.

And run lilo as root:

Late loading

Late loading of microcode updates happens after the system has booted. It uses files in /usr/lib/firmware/amd-ucode/ and /usr/lib/firmware/intel-ucode/ .

For AMD processors the microcode update files are provided by linux-firmware .

For Intel processors no package provides the microcode update files (FS#59841). To use late loading you need to manually extract intel-ucode/ from Intel’s provided archive.

Enabling late microcode updates

Unlike early loading, late loading of microcode updates on Arch Linux are enabled by default using /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/linux-firmware.conf . After boot the file gets parsed by systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service(8) and CPU microcode gets updated.

To manually reload the microcode, e.g. after updating the microcode files in /usr/lib/firmware/amd-ucode/ or /usr/lib/firmware/intel-ucode/ , run:

This allows to apply newer microcode updates without rebooting the system. For linux-firmware you can automate it with a pacman hook, e.g.:

Disabling late microcode updates

For AMD systems the CPU microcode will get updated even if amd-ucode is not installed since the files in /usr/lib/firmware/amd-ucode/ are provided by the linux-firmware package (FS#59840).

For virtual machines and containers (FS#46591) it is not possible to update the CPU microcode, so you may want to disable microcode updates. To do so, you must override the tmpfile /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/linux-firmware.conf that is provided by linux-firmware . It can be done by creating a file with the same filename in /etc/tmpfiles.d/ :

Verifying that microcode got updated on boot

Check the kernel messages with journalctl to see if the microcode has been updated:

On Intel systems one should see something similar to the following on every boot, indicating that microcode is updated very early on:

It is entirely possible, particularly with newer hardware, that there is no microcode update for the CPU. In that case, the output may look like this:

On AMD systems using early loading the output would look something like this:

On AMD systems using late loading the output will show the version of the old microcode before reloading the microcode and the new one once it is reloaded. It would look something like this:

Which CPUs accept microcode updates

Users may consult either Intel or AMD at the following links to see if a particular model is supported:

Detecting available microcode update

It is possible to find out if the intel-ucode.img contains a microcode image for the running CPU with iucode-tool .

1. Installintel-ucode (changing initrd is not required for detection)
2. Installiucode-tool
3. Load the cpuid kernel module:
4. Extract microcode image and search it for your cpuid:
5. If an update is available, it should show up below selected microcodes
6. The microcode might already be in your vendor bios and not show up loading in dmesg. Compare to the current microcode running grep microcode /proc/cpuinfo

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How to install/update Intel microcode firmware on Linux

How to find out current status of microcode

Run the following command as root user:
# dmesg | grep microcode
Sample outputs:

Please note that it is entirely possible that there is no microcode update available for your CPU. In that case it will look as follows:

How to install Intel microcode firmware on Linux using a package manager

Tool to transform and deploy CPU microcode update for x86/amd64 comes with Linux. The procedure to install AMD or Intel microcode firmware on Linux is as follows:

1. Open the terminal app
2. Debian/Ubuntu Linux user type: sudo apt install intel-microcode
3. CentOS/RHEL Linux user type: sudo yum install microcode_ctl

The package names are as follows for popular Linux distros:

• microcode_ctl and linux-firmware – CentOS/RHEL microcode update package
• intel-microcode – Debian/Ubuntu and clones microcode update package for Intel CPUS
• amd64-microcode – Debian/Ubuntu and clones microcode firmware for AMD CPUs
• linux-firmware – Arch Linux microcode firmware for AMD CPUs (installed by default and no action is needed on your part)
• intel-ucode – Arch Linux microcode firmware for Intel CPUs
• microcode_ctl, linux-firmware and ucode-intel – Suse/OpenSUSE Linux microcode update package

Warning: In some cases, microcode update may cause boot issues such as server getting hang or resets automatically at the time of boot. The procedure worked for me, and I am an experienced sysadmin. I do not take responsibility for any hardware failures. Do it at your own risk.

Examples

Type the following apt command/apt-get command on a Debian/Ubuntu Linux for Intel CPU:
$ sudo apt-get install intel-microcode
Sample outputs:

You must reboot the box to activate micocode update:
$ sudo reboot
Verify it after reboot:
# dmesg | grep ‘microcode’
Sample outputs:

If you are using RHEL/CentOS try installing or updating the following two packages using yum command:
$ sudo yum install linux-firmware microcode_ctl
$ sudo reboot
$ sudo dmesg | grep ‘microcode’

How to update/install microcode downloaded from Intel site

Only use the following method when recommended by your vendor otherwise stick to Linux packages as described above. Most Linux distro maintainer update microcode via the package manager. Package manager method is safe as tested by many users.

How to install Intel processor microcode blob for Linux (20180108 release)

Ok, first visit AMD or Intel site to grab the latest microcode firmware. In this example, I have a file named

/Downloads/microcode-20180108.tgz (don’t forget to check for checksum) that suppose to help with meltdown/Spectre. First extract it using the tar command:
$ mkdir firmware
$ cd firmware
$ tar xvf

/Downloads/microcode-20180108.tgz
$ ls -l
Sample outputs:

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I tested the following instructions on a CentOS 7.x/RHEL 7.x/Debian 9.x and Ubuntu 17.10 only. Older kernel shipped with older distro might not work if you do not see /sys/devices/system/cpu/microcode/reload file. See discussion below. Please note that few customers getting of higher system reboots after applying firmware updates. Specifically, these systems are running Intel Broadwell and Haswell CPUs for both client and data center cpus used in server. Do not apply Intel firmware release 20180108 on Intel Broadwell and Haswell CPUs. If possible use package manager method.

Make sure /sys/devices/system/cpu/microcode/reload exits:
$ ls -l /sys/devices/system/cpu/microcode/reload
You must copy all files from intel-ucode to /lib/firmware/intel-ucode/ using the cp command:
$ sudo cp -v intel-ucode/* /lib/firmware/intel-ucode/
You just copied intel-ucode directory to /lib/firmware/. Write the reload interface to 1 to reload the microcode files:
# echo 1 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/microcode/reload
Update an existing initramfs so that next time it get loaded via kernel:
$ sudo update-initramfs -u
$ sudo reboot
Verifying that microcode got updated on boot or reloaded by echo command:
# dmesg | grep microcode
That is all. You have just updated firmware for your Intel CPU.

References

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Intel graphics

Since Intel provides and supports open source drivers, Intel graphics are essentially plug-and-play.

For a comprehensive list of Intel GPU models and corresponding chipsets and CPUs, see Wikipedia:List of Intel graphics processing units.

Contents

Installation

Install the mesa package, which provides the DRI driver for 3D acceleration.

• For 32-bit application support, also install the lib32-mesa package from the multilib repository.
• For the DDX driver (which provides 2D acceleration in Xorg), install the xf86-video-intel package. (Often not recommended, see note below.)
• For Vulkan support (Ivy Bridge and newer), install the vulkan-intel package.

Loading

The Intel kernel module should load fine automatically on system boot.

If it does not happen, then:

• Make sure you do not have nomodeset or vga= as a kernel parameter, since Intel requires kernel mode-setting.
• Also, check that you have not disabled Intel by using any modprobe blacklisting within /etc/modprobe.d/ or /usr/lib/modprobe.d/ .

Enable early KMS

Kernel mode setting (KMS) is supported by Intel chipsets that use the i915 DRM driver and is mandatory and enabled by default.

Refer to Kernel mode setting#Early KMS start for instructions on how to enable KMS as soon as possible at the boot process.

Enable GuC / HuC firmware loading

On supported Skylake and newer processors, some video features (e.g. CBR rate control on SKL low-power encoding mode) may require the use of an updated GPU firmware,[3] which is loaded by default only on Gen 11+ hardware since Linux 5.4.[4] Enabling GuC/HuC firmware loading can cause issues on some systems; disable it if you experience freezing (for example, after resuming from hibernation).

For processors before Gen 11, it is necessary to add i915.enable_guc=2 to the kernel parameters to enable both GuC and HuC firmware loading. Alternatively, if the initramfs already includes the i915 module (see Kernel mode setting#Early KMS start), you can set these options through a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ , e.g.:

On next boot you can verify both GuC and HuC are enabled by using dmesg:

If they are not supported by your graphics adapter you will see:

Alternatively, check using:

Note that the related warning is not fatal, as explained in [5]:

Xorg configuration

There may be no need for any configuration to run Xorg.

However, if Xorg does not start, and to take advantage of some driver options, you can create an Xorg configuration file similar to the one below:

Additional options are added by the user on new lines below Driver . For the full list of options, see the intel(4) man page.

AccelMethod

You may need to indicate Option «AccelMethod» when creating a configuration file, the classical options are UXA , SNA (default) and BLT .

If you experience issues with default SNA (e.g. pixelated graphics, corrupt text, etc.), try using UXA instead, which can be done by adding the following line to your configuration file:

Module-based options

The i915 kernel module allows for configuration via module options. Some of the module options impact power saving.

A list of all options along with short descriptions and default values can be generated with the following command:

To check which options are currently enabled, run

You will note that many options default to -1, resulting in per-chip powersaving defaults. It is however possible to configure more aggressive powersaving by using module options.

Framebuffer compression (enable_fbc)

Making use of Framebuffer compression (FBC) can reduce power consumption while reducing memory bandwidth needed for screen refreshes.

To enable FBC, use i915.enable_fbc=1 as kernel parameter or set in /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf :

Enabling frame buffer compression on pre-Sandy Bridge CPUs results in endless error messages:

The solution is to disable frame buffer compression which will imperceptibly increase power consumption (around 0.06 W). In order to disable it add i915.enable_fbc=0 to the kernel line parameters. More information on the results of disabled compression can be found here.

Fastboot

The goal of Intel Fastboot is to preserve the frame-buffer as setup by the BIOS or bootloader to avoid any flickering until Xorg has started.[9][10]

To force enable fastboot on platforms where it is not the default already, set i915.fastboot=1 as kernel parameter or set in /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf :

Intel GVT-g graphics virtualization support

See Intel GVT-g for details.

Tips and tricks

Setting scaling mode

This can be useful for some full screen applications:

where param can be:

• center : resolution will be kept exactly as defined, no scaling will be made,
• full : scale the resolution so it uses the entire screen or
• full_aspect : scale the resolution to the maximum possible but keep the aspect ratio.

If it does not work, try:

where param is one of «Full» , «Center» or «Full aspect» .

Hardware accelerated H.264 decoding on GMA 4500

The libva-intel-driver package only provides hardware accelerated MPEG-2 decoding for GMA 4500 series GPUs. The H.264 decoding support is maintained in a separated g45-h264 branch, which can be used by installing libva-intel-driver-g45-h264 AUR package. Note, however, that this support is experimental and its development has been abandoned. Using the VA-API with this driver on a GMA 4500 series GPU will offload the CPU but may not result in as smooth a playback as non-accelerated playback. Tests using mplayer showed that using vaapi to play back an H.264 encoded 1080p video halved the CPU load (compared to the XV overlay) but resulted in very choppy playback, while 720p worked reasonably well [12]. This is echoed by other experiences [13]. Setting the preallocated video ram size higher in BIOS results in much better hardware decoded playback. Even 1080p h264 works well if this is done. Smooth playback (1080p/720p) works also with mpv-git AUR in combination with ffmpeg-git AUR and libva-intel-driver-g45-h264 AUR . With MPV and the Firefox plugin «Send to MPV player»[14] it is possible to watch hardware accelerated YouTube videos.

Old OpenGL Driver (i965)

As of Mesa 19.2, a new OpenGL driver, Iris, is available for testing. In Mesa 20.0, the Iris driver is promoted to be the default for Gen8+. Certain applications run faster with it. You may disable it and revert to use the old i965 driver by setting the MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965 environment variable before starting any OpenGL application. This setting does not affect Vulkan applications.

Overriding reported OpenGL version

The MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE environment variable can be used to override the reported OpenGL version to any application. For example, setting MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.5 will report OpenGL 4.5.

Setting brightness and gamma

Troubleshooting

Tearing

The SNA acceleration method causes tearing on some machines. To fix this, enable the TearFree option in the driver by adding the following line to your configuration file:

See the original bug report for more info.

Disable Vertical Synchronization (VSYNC)

• Chomium/Chrome has lags and slow performance due to GPU and runs smoothly with —disable-gpu switch
• glxgears test does not show desired performance

The intel-driver uses Triple Buffering for vertical synchronization; this allows for full performance and avoids tearing. To turn vertical synchronization off (e.g. for benchmarking) use this .drirc in your home directory:

DRI3 issues

DRI3 is the default DRI version in xf86-video-intel . On some systems this can cause issues such as this. To switch back to DRI2 add the following line to your configuration file:

For the modesetting driver, this method of disabling DRI3 does not work. Instead, one can set the environment variable LIBGL_DRI3_DISABLE=1 .

Font and screen corruption in GTK applications (missing glyphs after suspend/resume)

Should you experience missing font glyphs in GTK applications, the following workaround might help. Edit /etc/environment to add the following line:

Blank screen during boot, when «Loading modules»

If using «late start» KMS and the screen goes blank when «Loading modules», it may help to add i915 and intel_agp to the initramfs. See Kernel mode setting#Early KMS start section.

Alternatively, appending the following kernel parameter seems to work as well:

If you need to output to VGA then try this:

X freeze/crash with intel driver

Some issues with X crashing, GPU hanging, or problems with X freezing, can be fixed by disabling the GPU usage with the NoAccel option — add the following lines to your configuration file:

Alternatively, try to disable the 3D acceleration only with the DRI option:

Baytrail complete freeze

If you are using kernel > 3.16 on Baytrail architecture and randomly encounter total system freezes, the following kernel option is a workaround until this bug is fixed in the linux kernel.

This is originally an Intel CPU bug that can be triggered by certain c-state transitions. It can also happen with Linux kernel 3.16 or Windows, though apparently much more rarely. The kernel option will prevent the freeze by avoiding c-state transitions but will also increase power consumption.

Adding undetected resolutions

This issue is covered on the Xrandr page.

Backlight is not adjustable

If after resuming from suspend, the hotkeys for changing the screen brightness do not take effect, check your configuration against the Backlight article.

If the problem persists, try one of the following kernel parameters:

Also make sure you are not using fastboot mode (i915.fastboot kernel parameter), it is known for breaking backlight controls.

Corruption or unresponsiveness in Chromium and Firefox

If you experience corruption, unresponsiveness, lags or slow performance in Chromium and/or Firefox some possible solutions are:

Kernel crashing w/kernels 4.0+ on Broadwell/Core-M chips

A few seconds after X/Wayland loads the machine will freeze and journalctl will log a kernel crash referencing the Intel graphics as below:

This can be fixed by disabling execlist support which was changed to default on with kernel 4.0. Add the following kernel parameter:

This is known to be broken to at least kernel 4.0.5.

Lag in Windows guests

The video output of a Windows guest in VirtualBox sometimes hangs until the host forces a screen update (e.g. by moving the mouse cursor). Removing the enable_fbc=1 option fixes this issue.

Screen flickering

Panel Self Refresh (PSR), a power saving feature used by Intel iGPUs is known to cause flickering in some instances FS#49628 FS#49371 FS#50605. A temporary solution is to disable this feature using the kernel parameter i915.enable_psr=0 .

OpenGL 2.1 with i915 driver

The update of mesa from version 13.x to 17 may break support for OpenGL 2.1 on third gen Intel GPUs (GMA3100, see here), as described in this article, reverting it back to OpenGL 1.4. However this could be restored manually by setting /etc/drirc or

/.drirc options like:

KMS Issue: console is limited to small area

One of the low-resolution video ports may be enabled on boot which is causing the terminal to utilize a small area of the screen. To fix, explicitly disable the port with an i915 module setting with video=SVIDEO-1:d in the kernel command line parameter in the bootloader. See Kernel parameters for more info.

If that does not work, try disabling TV1 or VGA1 instead of SVIDEO-1. Video port names can be listed with xrandr.

Weathered colors (color range problems)

The «Broadcast RGB» property in the Intel driver defines the color range which can be used by the display — either «Limited 16:235» (which limits the color range for some displays that cannot properly process full range color signals) and «Full». Since kernel 3.9, the new default property «Automatic» tries to determine whenever the display supports the full color range, and if it does not/detection fails, color range falls back to «Limited 16:235». If detections faulty falls back to limited color range, it results in weathered colors and grey blacks. On some displays/connectors, despite the full color range being supported properly, automatic detection fails and falls back to the limited color range (upstream bug report, kernels 4.18-4.20).

You can forcefully set the desired color range by running xrandr —output —set «Broadcast RGB» «Full» (replace with the appropriate output device, listed by running xrandr ). There is no way to persist this setting in xorg.conf .

No sound through HDMI on a Haswell CPU

According to a Linux kernel issue, sound will not be output through HDMI if intel_iommu=on . To fix this problem, use the following kernel parameter:

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