Re: [tip:x86/pti] x86/speculation: Use IBRS if available before calling into firmware

Peter Zijlstra
2018-02-19T10:08:32Z

On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 09:29:12AM +0000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Mon, 2018-02-19 at 10:20 +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> >
> > I did not update or otherwise change packages while I was bisecting; the
> > machine is:
> >
> > vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
> > cpu family      : 6
> > model           : 62
> > model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz
> > stepping        : 4
> > microcode       : 0x428
>
> That's IVX with a microcode that doesn't *have* IBRS/IBPB. I don't
> think there's a publicly available microcode that does; I assume you
> didn't have one and build it into your kernel for early loading, and
> thus you really weren't even using IBRS here? The code never even gets
> patched in?

I wasn't using IRBS afaik. I was bisceting tip/master before the
IBRS/firmware patches (not sure they're in now or not).

No fancy ucode setup, I think I have ucode image in the initrd, but that
would be same for all kernels.