Debian – TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata

debianfirmwarekernel

I sent my computer to the manufacturer for diagnosis and help for a video output issue it was having. They updated the BIOS. Since then I've been getting

[Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version: 0x20 (or later)

I didn't have any microcode or ucode packages installed before and I didn't used to get this message.

I've contacted the manufacturer and they've responded "don't remember your ticket number but doubt we updated the BIOS", so they're not being very helpful.

It boots and works, but is TSC_DEADLINE important or useful?

The only thing I can find about it is this: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=73b866d89bf7c9a895d5445faad03fa3d56c8af8

But that seems to only apply to VirtualBox, and in any case I'm already running kernel 4.14 so I would think if that commit were going to fix my issue it already would have.

ryan@pocketwee:~$ uname -a
Linux pocketwee 4.14.0-1-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.14.2-1 (2017-11-30) x86_64 GNU/Linux

Best Answer

The sudden appearance of this message is rather odd; it suggests your updated firmware is no longer upgrading your CPU’s microcode, whereas the previous firmware you had, did. Weird... (Another possible scenario is that your CPU originally didn’t support TSC deadline at all, and your firmware is now upgrading its microcode to a version which declares support for TSC deadline, but has errata rendering it useless.)

In any case, TSC deadline support is nice to have, but not vital. The kernel has an elaborate framework for timekeeping and timed event handling; TSC deadline is one possible implementation of event handling, but not the only one. On CPUs which support it, it is nice to have though, because it’s very efficient.

To upgrade your microcode and hopefully re-enable TSC deadline support, you can install the microcode update packages from Debian’s contrib and non-free repositories. To do so, edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to ensure that your Debian repository definitions include main, contrib and non-free; then run

sudo apt update

followed by

sudo apt install intel-microcode

(for Intel CPUs) or

sudo apt install amd64-microcode

(for AMD CPUs). Once that’s done, reboot, and your microcode should be updated. If TSC deadline support is re-enabled, you won’t see the error message at boot, and you’ll see tsc_deadline_timer in the flags lines of /proc/cpuinfo.

The Debian wiki has more information on microcode updates.

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Debian – kernel update – WARNING: lvmetad is running but disabled. Restart lvmetad before enabling it!

according to info from Peter Rajnoha about an old 2014 fedora bug 1152185, "The warning is there because if lvmetad is already instantiated and running, then using use_lvmetad=0 will cause LVM commands run under this setting to not notify lvmetad about any changes - therefore lvmetad may miss some information - hence the warning.".

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1152185

However, in our case use_lvmetad = 0, so I tend to believe the warnings appear only during the update and the grub reconfiguration.

According to the explanations in the bug report, this is connected with lvm2-monitor, which is happily running on my system, I believe on yours too. Please check out the Process line:

# systemctl status lvm2-monitor
â lvm2-monitor.service - Monitoring of LVM2 mirrors, snapshots etc. using     dmeventd or progress polling
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/lvm2-monitor.service; enabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Sat 2016-07-09 04:04:49 EEST; 34min ago
     Docs: man:dmeventd(8)
           man:lvcreate(8)
           man:lvchange(8)
           man:vgchange(8)
  Process: 328 ExecStart=/sbin/lvm vgchange --monitor y --ignoreskippedcluster (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 328 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   CGroup: /system.slice/lvm2-monitor.service

I do not see any traces of the warning after reboot and based on the other information I believe the warning is safe to ignore at this stage. If you get any more or other warnings, you should look into it further.

Also, I used to receive LVM warnings on each image update or grub reconfiguration about the names I believe, which turned out to be unimportant and most probably connected to the old hardware. So this is not uncommon.

Preexo, I hope that this has answered your two concerns. Rubo77, I hope I have been helpful for you too.

Kind regards!

Linux – intel-ucode not updating? Firmware Bug: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version (or later)

Your installed kernel and initramfs are not loaded (see the difference between the output of uname and pacman -Q linux. This means that you likely ran an update with /boot unmounted.

Chroot in, make sure /boot is mounted and rerun the upgrade and regenerate your initramfs. You may need to clean up the files that will have been installed where /boot should have been mounted.

Best Answer

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Debian – kernel update – WARNING: lvmetad is running but disabled. Restart lvmetad before enabling it!

Linux – intel-ucode not updating? Firmware Bug: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version (or later)

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