Hi - I wanted to see if folks have any insights that might help a decision I’m trying to make…
My system (details at the bottom) has an AMD chip that seems to be impacted by a bug in the fTPM, causing occasional full system stuttering:
I’ve installed all the latest firmware updates from HP, and it appears that the fix for that issue hasn’t been incorporated by them, the motherboard manufacturer, or whoever is responsible. While the stutters aren’t constant, they are pretty annoying (seem to be happening at especially inopportune times recently), so I’m considering disabling the fTPM chip in the system BIOS to see if that helps.
However, I’ve seen several places where fTPM is mentioned as an important component of the future of Linux security, part of the future Fedora vision, etc. - however I wasn’t able to find (within the Docs site, anyway) specific current things that it would be used for, other than full-disk encryption (which I don’t have in place).
In that situation, does anyone have any insights into what risks (if any) would be created by disabling TPM? Are there parts of the Fedora Workstation platform that would be impaired by doing so, or is most usage future-facing?
Thanks for any advice!
System:
Kernel: 6.1.14-200.fc37.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
v: 2.38-25.fc37 Desktop: GNOME v: 43.3 tk: GTK v: 3.24.37 wm: gnome-shell
dm: GDM Distro: Fedora release 37 (Thirty Seven)
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: HP product: HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15-ec2xxx v: N/A
serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: HP model: 88DD v: 96.33 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: AMI
v: F.23 date: 10/20/2022
Battery:
ID-1: BAT0 charge: 45.8 Wh (100.0%) condition: 45.8/45.8 Wh (100.0%)
volts: 12.6 min: 11.6 model: HP Primary serial: <filter> status: full
Device-1: apple_mfi_fastcharge model: N/A serial: N/A charge: N/A
status: N/A
CPU:
Info: 6-core model: AMD Ryzen 5 5600H with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
type: MT MCP arch: Zen 3 rev: 0 cache: L1: 384 KiB L2: 3 MiB L3: 16 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 1408 high: 3300 min/max: 1200/4280 boost: enabled cores:
1: 1200 2: 1200 3: 3300 4: 1200 5: 1200 6: 1200 7: 1200 8: 1200 9: 1200
10: 1200 11: 1604 12: 1200 bogomips: 79049
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA TU117M vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: nvidia v: 525.89.02
arch: Turing pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 8 ports: active: none
empty: HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10de:1f99
Device-2: AMD Cezanne [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Mobile Series]
vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: GCN-5 pcie:
speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: eDP-1 empty: none bus-ID: 05:00.0
chip-ID: 1002:1638 temp: 44.0 C
Device-3: Luxvisions Innotech HP TrueVision HD Camera type: USB
driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 3-3:3 chip-ID: 30c9:0035
Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.20.14 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.8
compositor: gnome-shell driver: X: loaded: amdgpu,nvidia
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa alternate: nv dri: radeonsi
gpu: amdgpu display-ID: 0
Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: BOE Display 0x094d res: 1920x1080 dpi: 142
diag: 395mm (15.5")
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 22.3.6 renderer: AMD Radeon Graphics (renoir LLVM
15.0.7 DRM 3.49 6.1.14-200.fc37.x86_64) direct-render: Yes
Audio:
Device-1: NVIDIA vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 8 bus-ID: 01:00.1 chip-ID: 10de:10fa
Device-2: AMD ACP/ACP3X/ACP6x Audio Coprocessor vendor: Hewlett-Packard
driver: N/A pcie: speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 05:00.5 chip-ID: 1022:15e2
Device-3: AMD Family 17h/19h HD Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard
driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel pcie: speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 16
bus-ID: 05:00.6 chip-ID: 1022:15e3
Sound API: ALSA v: k6.1.14-200.fc37.x86_64 running: yes
Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: no
Sound Server-2: PipeWire v: 0.3.66 running: yes
Network:
Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: r8169 v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s
lanes: 1 port: e000 bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168
IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter>
Device-2: Realtek RTL8852AE 802.11ax PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: rtw89_8852ae v: kernel pcie: speed: 2.5 GT/s
lanes: 1 port: d000 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8852
IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter>
IF-ID-1: enp5s0f3u1c4i2 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
Device-1: Realtek Bluetooth Radio type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
bus-ID: 1-4:2 chip-ID: 0bda:2852
Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: see --recommends
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 249.43 GiB (52.3%)
ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: MZVLQ512HALU-000H1
size: 476.94 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 33.9 C
Partition:
ID-1: / size: 475.35 GiB used: 249.07 GiB (52.4%) fs: btrfs
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 321.3 MiB (33.0%) fs: ext4
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 52.2 MiB (8.7%) fs: vfat
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
ID-4: /home size: 475.35 GiB used: 249.07 GiB (52.4%) fs: btrfs
dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Swap:
ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 100
dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
System Temperatures: cpu: 52.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 45.0 C
Fan Speeds (RPM): fan-1: 0 fan-2: 0
Info:
Processes: 396 Uptime: 1h 9m Memory: 14.97 GiB used: 5.27 GiB (35.2%)
Init: systemd v: 251 target: graphical (5) default: graphical Compilers:
gcc: 12.2.1 Packages: pm: rpm pkgs: N/A note: see --rpm pm: flatpak pkgs: 46
Shell: Bash v: 5.2.15 running-in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.3.25