Re: [PATCH RESEND] x86: kernel/microcode_core.c simple_strtoul cleanup

[Shuah Khan <shuahkhan@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 2012-05-08 at 06:00 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@hmh.eng.br> wrote:
> 
> > > Of course, one can iterate over each core in a shell-loop 
> > > and write into the reload file to reload ucode after having 
> > > updated the ucode image in /lib/firmware but removing and 
> > > then modprobing the module is shorter :-)
> > 
> > Can we PLEASE fix it properly by adding a new node (which is 
> > _not_ per-cpu) that requests the microcode core to refresh all 
> > cpus?  Preferably by invalidating the microcode cache, THEN 
> > fetching each required microcode just once for the first core 
> > that needs it, and caching it for use the other cores.  You 
> > can leave the (IMHO mostly useless) per-cpu sysfs nodes alone, 
> > so as to not break ABI, or deprecate them for an year or 
> > something.
> > 
> > I am speaking this with my userland maintainer hat.  I *do 
> > NOT* want to rmmod crap in a production server to update 
> > microcode.  And I want to be able to support static-compiled 
> > microcode.
> 
> Seconded. There's also the ability to disable module unloading.

I will take a stab at the disabling module unloading if I may. The rest
of the tasks are a bit out of my league at this time. :)

Thanks,
-- Shuah