Bug 160833 - The /dev/cpu/microcode node required by the microcode_ctl initscript is not created
Summary: The /dev/cpu/microcode node required by the microcode_ctl initscript is not c...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
Classification: Red Hat
Component: kernel-utils
Version: 4.0
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
: ---
Assignee: Dave Jones
QA Contact: Brian Brock
URL:
Whiteboard:
: 166210 (view as bug list)
Depends On:
Blocks: 156322
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2005-06-17 18:39 UTC by Jean-Philippe Côté
Modified: 2015-01-04 22:20 UTC (History)
9 users (show)

Fixed In Version: RHBA-2005-534
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2005-10-05 14:41:58 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
patch for /etc/rc.d/init.d/microcode_ctl (1.21 KB, patch)
2005-06-28 22:06 UTC, James Ralston
no flags Details | Diff
patch for microde_ctl, checks sufficient delay (340 bytes, patch)
2005-10-31 07:28 UTC, kamo
no flags Details | Diff


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHBA-2005:534 0 qe-ready SHIPPED_LIVE kernel-utils bug fix update 2005-10-05 04:00:00 UTC

Description Jean-Philippe Côté 2005-06-17 18:39:23 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

Description of problem:
If I run the following command: service microcode_ctl start I get an error saying that /dev/cpu/microcode isn't available. This, most notably, happens at boot up.

If I add the following lines to the initscript, everything works fine:

    mkdir -p `dirname $DEVICE`
    mknod -m 600 $DEVICE c 10 184

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
kernel-utils 2.4 13.1.66

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
service microcode_ctl start

Additional info:

Comment 1 Jean-Philippe Côté 2005-06-17 18:47:35 UTC
A similar bug was reported for FedoraCore 3 (#157672). That's probably where the
problem stems from.

Comment 3 James Ralston 2005-06-28 22:06:55 UTC
Created attachment 116092 [details]
patch for /etc/rc.d/init.d/microcode_ctl

Nope, that's not the problem.

In RHEL4 U1, udev correctly creates the /etc/cpu/microcode device file when the
microcode module is loaded.  The problem is that /etc/rc.d/init.d/microcode_ctl
tests for the presence of the device file *before* it attempts to modprobe the
microcode module.  As a result, if the microcode module isn't already loaded
(and it won't be, if the system's booting up), /etc/rc.d/init.d/microcode_ctl
doesn't find the /etc/cpu/microcode device file, and bombs out.

Here's a patch for /etc/rc.d/init.d/microcode_ctl that fixes the problem.  (I
think this operation ordering makes the most sense.)

Comment 7 David Van Duzer 2005-07-14 02:20:50 UTC
I've tried this patch, but I am still getting the same microcode device /dev/cpu/microcode doesn't exist? 
error on boot.  It seems there is a significant delay (more than 3 seconds) in udev creating the device files, 
so I'm making the script sleep for 4 seconds after the modprobe command.  I'm sure there's a more 
efficient way to handle this.

Using:
udev-039-10.8.EL4
hotplug-2004_04_01-7.5

Comment 9 James Ralston 2005-08-19 20:59:09 UTC
I think the significant delay is startup-specific.  If you run "modprobe
microcode" on quiescent system, it only takes a fraction of a second for the
device node to appear.

Probably a better way to handle it is to keep running "usleep 250000" until the
device node appears, with a reasonable timeout (e.g., 10 seconds) before aborting.


Comment 11 Peter Bieringer 2005-08-26 15:02:25 UTC
This happen to me also here on an RHEL4 system.

2 issues:

1) without the patch #116092, such message is been shown, without, it quits
quietly which is ok, because it's an Athlon CPU.

2) related to #9: there is already a delay included in the script:
        lt=0
        while [ ! -c $DEVICE ]; do
                lt=$[lt+1];
                [ $lt -gt 5 ] && break;
                sleep 1;
        done

Anyway, looks like since introducing udev and its asynchron device creation this
rises up to a common problem, it hit me also loading a framebuffer module and
try to execute fbset after the modprobe call in a script...



Comment 12 Chris Hapgood 2005-08-31 19:24:39 UTC
I have a similar problem in FC4 (upgraded from FC3 if that is relevant).

Comment 13 Florin Andrei 2005-09-13 19:58:51 UTC
I was able to fix this issue on FC4 by creating the executable file named
/etc/sysconfig/modules/microcode.modules with the following content:

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/modprobe microcode

After that microcode_ctl works fine when booting up.

Comment 14 Dave Jones 2005-09-14 06:21:14 UTC
*** Bug 166210 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15 Red Hat Bugzilla 2005-10-05 14:41:58 UTC
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem
described in this bug report. This report is therefore being
closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information
on the solution and/or where to find the updated files,
please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report
if the solution does not work for you.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2005-534.html


Comment 16 kamo 2005-10-31 07:28:05 UTC
Created attachment 120554 [details]
patch for microde_ctl, checks sufficient delay

The delay of 5 seconds is insufficient on my Dell PowerEdge 1850
with RHEL ES4 update2 (includes kernel-utils-2.4-13.1.69).
I tried several times with this patch, it needs 11 seconds.

Comment 17 Vince Valenti 2006-02-02 23:59:57 UTC
I also have a Dell PowerEdge 1850 and 5 seconds wasn't enough.  With kamo's
patch, I did three test boots and it took either 9 or 10 seconds.  The 1850 has
two Intel Xeon 3.2Ghz CPUs.

I also have a PowerEdge 850 and it seems to work fine on that with the 5 second
delay.


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