Linux kernel amdgpu firmware, ACPI and IP-block initialisation (drm/amdgpu/vcn): A correctness defect in the amdgpu

Impact

A correctness defect in the amdgpu firmware, ACPI and IP-block initialisation reachable through the driver's user-facing interface. The practical effect is an unstable or crashing GPU driver on a shared node. Upstream fix: drm/amdgpu/vcn: set no_user_fence for VCN v5.0.1 enc ring

Who can reach it

Local. Reachable by a local user with driver-load influence, or an attacker who controls platform ACPI tables / VBIOS content - usually root or firmware-level access rather than a tenant. Not reachable over the network and not reachable from a container that has no GPU device node mapped in.

What to do

Kernel-side fix: this lands in mainline Linux and flows into distro kernels (RHEL/Rocky, Ubuntu HWE, SLES) and into AMD's out-of-tree DKMS amdgpu package shipped with ROCm. Patch the kernel or the DKMS module, then **reload the amdgpu module or reboot the node** - you cannot fix a running driver in place. Reloading amdgpu requires no process holding /dev/kfd or a render node, so in practice this is a cordon + drain + reboot per node. Plan it as a rolling maintenance across the fleet; there is no VBIOS flash, no SBIOS/AGESA step and no firmware update involved. Nodes running the ROCm DKMS stack often lag mainline by a release or two, so confirm the fix is actually present in the AMD driver version you deploy rather than assuming a new distro kernel covers it.

References