Bad BIOS update

[wujastyk]

I have a NUC 11 Gen NUC 11PAQi50WA model.  It came with BIOS version 35 (PA0035.cap).  I'm running Linux Mint 20.2 on it with a Kingston 2TB SSD.  All peace and light. 

Then I updated to BIOS 41 and the machine started crashing every hour or so with alarming terminal messages about systemd-journald etc. (see pic attached below). 

I rolled back the BIOS to version 37 (couldn't get 35 from the Intel site) and now everything seems calm and good again.

Just sayin'.  Be wary of BIOS 41:

Date: August 11, 2021
ROM Image Checksum: 0xCBF8
ME Firmware: 15.0.10.1447
EC Firmware: 03.03.00
PMC Firmware: B0 150.01.20.1028

[LeonWaksman]

Did you used jumper recovery when updating to version 41? Please read the Known  Errata in the Release Notes.

Leon

[wujastyk]

No, I wasn't doing a recovery, which I took to be recovery from a failed upgrade.  The website does say this.

In the unlikely event that a BIOS update is interrupted, it's possible the BIOS may be left in an unusable state. Use the recovery BIOS update to recover from this condition

So I didn't see that the jumper recovery business applied to what I was doing and I didn't really understand what the release notes meant.  I installed 41, and then I installed 37.   Things continue to seem to be okay.  But re-reading the doc, I see that Intel wants you to use both 41.cap and recovery.cap (with opening the box and fooling with the jumper).  My bad.

I was also puzzled that I *could* go back to 37, since the 41 docs say,

Known Errata:
• Due to the Intel® ME firmware update in BIOS version
0040/0039, you can’t downgrade to version 0037 or earlier.

I *do* seem to have downgraded to 37 successfully. But I think I now understand that precisely because I never did the jumper/recovery.cap thing, and I never installed 40 or 39, I didn't update the ME.

Frankly, I am back to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  I was having some problems with Cinnamon crashing, but the BIOS upgrade was probably overkill.  At this point, I'm just glad to have a calm, working system again.  I can live with the Cinnamon crashes; all tasks are preserved, and it's more a cosmetic thing.