Canonical managed to get its fix for the Meltdown CPU bug out on Tuesday as scheduled, but was forced to issue a new release after discovering some 16.04 LTS Xenial users couldn’t boot their machines once the update was installed.
Several users reported the same problem after installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with the kernel image 4.4.0-108, with some reverting to the previous working kernel to resolve the issue.
On Wednesday, Canonical posted a new security notice confirming the problem, as well as a second update with a new Linux kernel image, 4.4.0-109.
Several users on Ubuntu forums have since confirmed that the update with the 4.4.0-109 Linux kernel image resolves the freezing issue.
“I can confirm that the new 4.4.0-109 kernel is working fine, so if anyone is still trying to get their machine running straight from boot-up, simply do your normal update to get the new version, then purge 4.4.0-108, as it seems to be useless for many users, perhaps just Intel CPUs,” wrote one user.
Canonical developers plan to address the two other related CPU vulnerabilities known as Spectre in a future update, Canonical’s Dustin Kirkland, VP of Ubuntu product development, said last week.
The Meltdown and Spectre attacks primarily impact CPUs from Intel and to a lesser extent those from AMD and Arm. However, IBM this week also began releasing firmware patches for its Power CPUs and will follow up next month with operating system patches.
Source: http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-vs-meltdown-ubuntu-gets-second-update-after-first-one-fails-to-boot/
Submitted by: Arnfried Walbrecht
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