Re: [PATCH 1/4] x86/speculation: Use IBRS if available before calling into firmware

Tom Lendacky
2018-02-14T16:36:36Z

On 2/14/2018 10:11 AM, David Woodhouse wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 2018-02-14 at 10:07 -0600, Tom Lendacky wrote:
>> Shouldn't these writes to the MSR be just for the IBRS bit?  The spec
>> also defines the STIBP bit for this MSR, and if that bit had been set by
>> BIOS for example, these writes will clear it.  And who knows what future
>> bits may be defined and how they'll be used.
>
> We don't use STIBP. If one day we do decide to set it in userspace for

Right, I understand the kernel doesn't use STIBP, that's why I mentioned
BIOS as an example.

> "sensitive" processes, if we're done having the debate about what those
> are, then that seems unlikely to conflict what what this code is doing
> anyway, as we would presumably *clear* it again on the way back into
> the kernel.
>
> I certainly don't want to add a read/modify/write cycle here just to

Right, definitely to be avoided. Maybe the value could be tracked in a
per-cpu variable so you never have to read it before the write. Just
change the bit in question and write. Not sure that's really feasible
though.

> cope with some hypothetical future use case for STIBP, when there would
> be better ways to cope.

Just putting it out there, no worries.

Thanks,
Tom

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