Re: [tip:x86/urgent] x86, cpu, amd: Add workaround for family 16h, erratum 793

Ingo Molnar
2014-01-15T18:38:18Z

* H. Peter Anvin <hpa@linux.intel.com> wrote:

> On 01/15/2014 05:36 AM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> >>
> >> msr_read() would essentially map to rdmsr_safe(). Each method has a
> >> return value that can be checked for failure.
> >
> > I'm not sure we want to use the _safe() variants by default as it
> > would generate the exception tables even in cases where they're
> > clearly not needed.

I don't think those new methods should be inline functions - thus
there will be only one exception entry for each.

> It would be particularly silly if what you end up with is in effect
> to wrap msr_read/write() in a BUG_ON(), which is the effect of the
> current (trapping) form. There is something to be said for hard
> errors.

Right, the fact that most of our MSR accesses today are
crash-on-failure, which happens to trigger crashes on a regular
schedule, where most of the crashes are 'harmless' situation except
that they crash the systems for good.

So I think defaulting to soft failures is the right approach.

Thanks,

Ingo