Mageia forum

There is circulating a serious new problem with Linux on the new Ryzen 7 or 9 3000 series (or perhaps the X570 chipset). It is bad enough that it might be that no recent distro can be installed, including Mageia 7.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... inux&num=2
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ryzen-3 ... you/144702

It is confirmed to affect Ubuntu 19.04, Manjaro Linux, and Fedora Workstation 31 (and apparently Debian 10). Some have posted (elsewhere, but with no details yet) that this is a known issue with the random number generator related to systemd. It seems the bug only gets more visibility on the new Ryzen processors. One person said systemd has indeed been patched, and the patch is in the new Debian version. It seems any systemd after 237 is the cause, and Mageia 7 is using 241, which will be a problem.

Since one of the many affected versions of systemd is in the boot media for Mageia 7, it will make installing impossible or very difficult on any Ryzen 3000 system. This is amplified by the fact that most Mageia users who get their hands on this chip probably are going to also have a new MB and chipset and will be performing fresh installs of the Mageia 7, the latest release. And updates won't help until the system is installed. So it requires the distro to create new installation images (which is a big deal for them) or that someone finds a workaround (perhaps some boot flag?).

I can't post a bug report, since I don't yet own a Ryzen 3000, so this is all second-hand information. But I wanted to let the Mageia community know of this serious problem, quickly. I hope it helps someone. I, was planning to get a Ryzen 3700 and run Mageia 7 on it...

Thanks for the heads-up. I was planning on buying a Ryzen 3000 PC, guess I'll wait and see for a while

It is possible it might be the new X570 chipset and not the Ryzen 3000, itself. Still not enough information out there about what is going on...

maxtog wrote: So it requires the distro to create new installation images (which is a big deal for them) or that someone finds a workaround (perhaps some boot flag?)

perhaps for Mageia, all that is required is that:
An advisory on the download page specific to this issue to advise that an install on this hardware requires to be performed by the net-install image.

a net-install image is much easier (and much less work) to create and test.

Seems to be a kernel issue with rdrand use in systemd on newer AMD CPUs

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=85911

If confirmed, considering that it's a long-standing bug, they'll probably patch systemd (some distros seem to have done so already), so it shouldn't take long to 'fix'

https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25080
According to mailing lists we are already in the progress of releasing new isos with this fixed, Mageia 7.1

Thanks for the link to the bug. It is in Cauldron, but if we have to wait for Mageia 7.1, that wouldn't be a good thing... So hoping instructions will come out for those needing to install/use 7.0 on the Ryzen 3000 series.

The dev's (mostly lead by TMB on this issue, who has confirmed, patched and tested the fix ALREADY), and it appears they're pushing to get iso's out over the weekend.

Spectacular stuff for a community distro.

I can't thank the whole mageia community enough.

Wow, that is amazing! Color me impressed!

The 7.1 isos are mirroring out and the official announcement and web page updates should be published soon-ish

tmb wrote:The 7.1 isos are mirroring out and the official announcement and web page updates should be published soon-ish

Fantastic!! That is going to save a lot of people a lot of headaches. Of course, I went to order all the parts for my new Ryzen 3700X system (MB/RAM/M.2/CPU) and now the CPU is unavailable to buy anywhere Just my luck!!