[CentOS] Updating microcode_ctl froze Centos7

Fri Jun 19 19:33:20 UTC 2020
Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>

On 6/17/20 2:36 AM, Robin Lee wrote:
> On Mon, 2020-06-15 at 22:25 +0200, Robin Lee wrote:
>> On Fri, 2020-06-12 at 09:20 +0200, Robin Lee wrote:
>>> Today when I ran yum update two packages came up microcode_ctl
>>> and unbound-libs. The updating process went fine until it
>>> outputted 
>>>
>>> Running transaction
>>>   Updating   : 2:microcode_ctl-2.1-61.6.el7_8.x86_64
>>>
>>> then it just froze. I could no longer ssh to the machine and the
>>> console was just blank. I had to shut down it hard. It came back up
>>> seemingly fine. But yum update doesn't work anymore. It says "Error
>>> importing repomd.xml from base/7/x86_64: Damaged repomd.xml file"
>>> I looked at the logs, but journalctl only shows the latest boot on
>>> this
>>> machine. 
>>>
>>> So I guess I have three questions
>>> - Any idea what happened with the update process?
>>> - How can I repair repomd.xml?
>>
>> Now that yum is up and running again it tells me the following 
>>
>> "There are unfinished transactions remaining. You might consider
>> running yum-complete-transaction, or "yum-complete-transaction --
>> cleanup-only" and "yum history redo last", first to finish them. If
>> those don't work you'll have to try removing/installing packages by
>> hand (maybe package-cleanup can help)."
>>
>> Doing "yum-complete-transaction --cleanup-only" should be safe,
>> right?
>> To clean up the botched microcode_ctl update and after that set it
>> among excluded packages.
> 
> 
> Is there some more information about this issue?
> 
> I've found this ticket https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=17452
> 
> I'm wondering how safe it is to update the microcode_ctl package on
> other Centos machines I have? They don't have a Supermicro motherboard.

I would say yes, but obviously there could be issues.

Intel provided the firmware .. Red Hat provided the source code.  Our
build seems correct.

If this is an issue, it is not a CentOS specific issue.

So, some BIOSes need upgraded to work with the latest firmware, etc.

I would check you Motherboard providers .. read about what firmware you
need to run with which BIOS versions, etc.

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