Applying Intel CPU microcode update

[Michael Breuer]

On 2/4/2010 5:02 AM, Kamil Paral wrote:
> I often use Rawhide in virt-manager using KVM. My host machine is Fedora
> 12. Recently I noticed that booting Rawhide takes ages. After more careful
> examination I found out that "Applying Intel CPU microcode update" line
> pauses the system exactly for 1 minute. Then the boot continues. I don't
> know if it is a problem in Rawhide or in some update of libvirt.
>
> Anyone seen similar problem?
>    
Yes. There are at least two if not more upstream issues.

1) The microcode module is incorrectly (re) loading microcode onto 
hyperthreaded cpus (Intel only issue). This doubles the time required.
2) The udevd/firmware interface is really slow.

The most recent regression I believe is due to the fact that earlier in 
F12 the firmware.sh script invoked by udev was incorrect, so the 
firmware was actually not being loaded (that was quicker).

I had some brief discussions on lkml about all this and then turned off 
the service and moved the load into rc.local (nohup service 
microcode_ctl start &)