Re: [GIT PULL] TPM DEVICE DRIVER: tpmdd-next-v6.18-2

Linus Torvalds
2025-10-10T15:51:32Z

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 at 22:35, Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jarkko/linux-tpmdd.git tags/tpmdd-next-v6.18-2

So I've pulled this, but I'm still unhappy about the explanation.

You tried to explain a one-line single-character change in that pull
request, and even in that explanation you spent most effort on
dismissing other peoples concerns.

That one-liner would have been - and is - sufficiently explained by
"it performs badly and breaks some configurations". There's absolutely
no reason to then go on to describe how *you* don't care about those
configurations.

But lookie here:

8 files changed, 137 insertions(+), 199 deletions(-)

that's the actual meat of the pull request, and it gets not a peep of
commentary.

I'd also like to point out that Microsoft spent *years* trying to do
the "we require certain typical TPM setups", and people complained
about their idiocy.

For all I know, they still push that crap.

I would certainly are *NOT* that stupid, and we are not going down that path.

So when it comes to TPM, the rule is not "typical cases work".

The rule is "if it causes problems, we acknowledge them and we avoid them".

Thus the whole "disable TCG_TPM2_HMAC" really doesn't merit this kind
of long explanation.

In contrast, the *other* changes are probably much more interesting than that.

Linus