[Testing Update] 2024-03-16 - Kernel, Calamares, Mesa, Plasma 6, KF 6, KDE Gear 24.04, LibreOffice

[Frog]

@michaldybczak

Mkinitcpio hooks need to be changed manually. There is a chance that if you don’t do that, some fallback GRUB settings will be used and the system will still boot, but not for everyone. Basically, you need to add microcode hook in mkinitcpio and regenerate it. At least this is how it was explained in the announcement regarding unstable update. I did that and all works, no errors or warnings during the boot. The packages that need to be upgraded together were also important, but they come in update together, so nothing to do here.

Welp, yolo. I’ll wait for further, more obvious, direct and on point instructions I suppose, if there’s any to provide.

@Yochanan

The Microcode Arch wiki page was just updated yesterday and is still being improved based on recent upstream and Mkinitcpio changes.

EDIT: OK so, I read a bit in this thread [Unstable Update] March 2024 Edition and read the .pacnew file, and the article on microcodes on Arch Linux wiki (at the same time Yochanan posted it).

But is it really necessary? I don’t think it is a mandatory thing to do for most people and I don’t understand what the panic is about actually and why we are expecting the next unbootable armageddon suddenly. I mean for GRUB users, which is 99% of people on Manjaro will have anyway since it is provided with GRUB by default, the microcode updates are added automatically in the boot process independently of the initramfs and how it has been generated if you have the microcode packages installed on your system, at least according to Arch Wiki and assuming Manjaro’s implementation of GRUB follows the same rule:

-Microcode in a separate initramfs file

Early microcode updates must otherwise be enabled by adding /boot/amd-ucode.img or /boot/intel-ucode.img as the first initrd in the bootloader configuration file. This is before the normal initrd file. See below for instructions for common bootloaders.

In the following sections replace cpu_manufacturer with your CPU manufacturer, i.e. amd or intel.
-GRUB

grub-mkconfig will automatically detect the microcode update and configure GRUB appropriately. After installing the microcode package, regenerate the GRUB configuration to activate loading the microcode update by running:

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Alternatively, users that manage their GRUB configuration file manually can add /boot/cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img (or /cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img if /boot is a separate partition) as follows:

/boot/grub/grub.cfg

...
echo 'Loading initial ramdisk'
initrd	/boot/cpu_manufacturer-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img
...

Repeat it for each menu entry.

As far as I understand it, it only has to be done if one actually desires to add the microcode updates into the initramfs and doesn’t want to have to apply the microcode updates at the boot process separately in the initrd configuration, and doing it twice is pointless. For those specific uses, that would be extremely important to implement the change or else, the microcode updates won’t be applied anymore. But for everyone else? I would not even bother to touch /etc/mkinitcpio.conf in this instance.