[ale] News: Red Hat slams into reverse on CPU fix for Spectre design blunder

[Ted W.]

Thanks for the heads up on this. So far I've done a handful of Redhat
kernel upgrades on 7.3 and haven't had any issues. The only problems
I've had so far are my clusters running 4.4 kernels from elrepo. The
4.4.110 kernel works fine but, as predicted, the Intel 10GbE module
built in to the packaged initramfs is broken (still) and I'm having to
compile my own module from Intel sources and strip the bad one from
initramfs. No related issues WRT spectre/meltdown patches, though.
Though, I do wish the upstream kernel had the flags Redhat built in to
their kernel so I could get some more concrete benchmark data out of it.

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 02:53:51PM +0000, Lightner, Jeffrey via Ale wrote:
> The first box (RHEL7.4) I attempted to update panic'ed so I had to boot from the older kernel.
> 
> However, I'm not sure if that was caused by the new kernel and firmware package or the fact that I accidentally rebooted the box before it finished a full "yum update" of all packages I'd run.   The interruption left it with lots of duplicate packages (the old and the updated versions) that I had to clean up.   Even after the cleanup and new completed "yum update" it panic'ed on the next boot.   On trying to boot from the older kernel it left the system at a place where I couldn't get into GUI console, text console or via ssh.   It may be the instability RedHat is now reporting that caused the final state or it might be my fubar (or a combination). 
> 
> The good news is we already had a replacement for this server planned.  Rather than wasting any more time on the old server (I was able to boot into single user on old kernel) I opted to go ahead and install the replacement.   It had the then latest updates but had been running fine on those.   Based on RedHat's announcements I intend to run updates on it again so it will do the reversion they're recommending.
> 
> The other good news is that working with all that prevented me from being Johnny on the spot with all our other systems.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ale [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of DJ-Pfulio via Ale
> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2018 8:23 AM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: [ale] News: Red Hat slams into reverse on CPU fix for Spectre design blunder
> 
> Red Hat slams into reverse on CPU fix for Spectre design blunder
> 
> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/18/red_hat_spectre_firmware_update_woes/
> 
> Be careful out there.
> 
> Anyone seen system instabilities from the different layers of patches?
> 
> I've delayed patching the last few weeks to let others find most of the issues first. ;) _______________________________________________
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