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I have a Lenovo Yoga 710-11ISK laptop. After installing intel-microcode 3.20200609.0ubuntu0.20.04.0, my computer freezes and will no longer boot. I was able to boot when I selected a different kernel from the grub menu (5.4.0-31-generic).

I decided to do a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04. After installing Ubuntu, I ran the software updater. The same thing happened. It crashed while installing the microcode update and I can no longer boot again.

The computer has an intel m3-6Y30 processor and Intel HD Graphics 515

What would be the best way to fix this? Is there a better place for me to post this? I'm not sure where to file a bug report.

RandyBoBandy
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    Alright. well I guess I should have researched my issue better. I didn't investigate the launchpad bugs completely. It has already been posted: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/intel-microcode/+bug/1882890 – RandyBoBandy Jun 10 '20 at 09:06
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    Looks like they already released an update fixing the issue – GammaGames Jun 10 '20 at 21:14
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    @GammaGames, the updated fix rolls-back the microcode in that troublesome package for the intel processors like mine and RandyBoBandy. It uses the microcode basically from the previous one. It doesn't fix the new microcode, only Intel can do that so our chips can get whatever "new stuff" everyone else is getting. – DanglingPointer Jun 10 '20 at 23:47
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    This isn't first time they released microcode to grandparent to rollback from parent and it probably won't be the last time. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jun 11 '20 at 12:41
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    I think this on topic but a duplicate as we had same problem with Spectre and Meltdown microcode. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jun 11 '20 at 12:45
  • I think it is on topic as well... Ubuntu user does ubuntu update and ubuntu update breaks the ubuntu users whole system! Don't know how to recover so ask AskUbuntu. Find out it may be microcode related then go to Launchpad. This is on topic! – DanglingPointer Jun 12 '20 at 01:52

3 Answers3

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I've got the exact same laptop and had encountered the exact same problem starting 6 hours ago!

Here's my work-around also captured in that Launchpad bug you quoted in your comment....

  1. I went here: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/intel-microcode to check what version of intel-microcode to downgrade to. Basically I wanted the previous one that had no issues.

  2. I used an ubuntu-live-usb to chroot into my yoga 710-11ISK laptop (intel m3-6Y30)

  3. sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove intel-microcode

  4. sudo apt install -y intel-microcode=3.20191115.1ubuntu3

    That's the version from point 1 above

  5. I was unable to update-initramfs for some reason while in chroot I noticed that ~1/7 reboots into recovery would work; don't know why. But I found out the hard way trying to figure out what the heck had gone wrong banging my head reboot after reboot! Anyway once in recovery mode I...

    sudo update-initramfs -u

  6. I rebooted and logged-in multiple times to ensure problem is gone. Including from powered-off state. Awesome!

  7. Ubuntu's package management will want to install the newest cr@p intel-microcode (I swear I'm getting AMD next time)...

    sudo apt-mark hold intel-microcode

That holds the package from upgrading until the microcode is fixed. I don't think Ubuntu can fix this, it will have to be Intel.

I hear Lenovo are now selling Ubuntu certified AMD laptops!... hmmm

muru
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DanglingPointer
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    The exact same instructions worked for my Intel NUC 6i7KYK running Ubuntu 20.04 as well, thanks! The problem (stuck on black screen at startup or stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk..." in recovery mode) appeared simply after upgrading Ubuntu from 18.x to 20.04 – meyertee Aug 26 '20 at 14:24
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    Thankyou. I had to do this in combination with disabling "Intel Speedstep Technology" in BIOS. Brand new Thinkpad X1 Yoga was only freezing about 30 seconds after login to linux. – Tom Berghuis Sep 23 '20 at 07:47
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The bug report contains workarounds if you are hit by the problem. Essentially, you can boot into recovery mode and remove intel-microcode.

See Paulo's comment, which I based my workaround on. Hope it helps, but I would in any case recommend to read through the whole bug report if better solutions are added.

Disclaimer: Please note that this is not intended as a permanent fix. The downside is that you loose Intel's microcode updates. But at least, you can boot the system again. Hopefully, it gets fixed on upstream. Then it should be safe to reinstall intel-microcode again.

As it is an upstream problem, you can also follow the upstream bug report on the Intel repository.

Update: A fix has been released for all Ubuntu versions.

Side-note: I still have to fallback to an older Kernel (5.4.0-33-generic), otherwise, networking on my notebook (ThinkPad X1 Carbon 4th) is broken and it will also fail to detect external monitors. It turned out to be an unrelated bug. Manually installing linux-modules-extra for 5.4.0-37 solved some of the issues. At least, networking is then back again.

Philipp Claßen
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    Problem is with the Yoga 710-11ISK which I've also got, it hardly makes it past just after grub on recovery mode or any mode! Sometimes it doesn't even make it past the Lenovo splash screen and doesn't make it to grub! chroot is the way to sort it. I by chance was able to boot through, but it is like 1/7 times of rebooting. – DanglingPointer Jun 10 '20 at 14:46
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Hopefully this will be useful for anyone trying to boot.

I am having issue booting with a m3-6y30 machine having this update.

First, I was not able to boot even in recovery mode. What worked for me is adding dis_ucode_ldr to the kernel command.

Advanced Options → press E for the option you want to run → add dis_ucode_ldr to the end of the line starting with linux.

After that I was able to boot and probably will install an older version as described above.

Eliah Kagan
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omriv
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