linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/2] MSR: Add support for safe variants

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Message-ID: <460AD872.6020609@assembler.cz>
Date:	Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:04:50 +0200
From:	Rudolf Marek <r.marek@...embler.cz>
To:	Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@...uu.se>
CC:	Jean Delvare <khali@...ux-fr.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...nvz.org>,
	Dave Jones <davej@...hat.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] MSR: Add support for safe variants

Hello Mikael,

> Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I for one strongly believe
> that any attempt to access an MSR "which might not be there" is
> inherently wrong. It implies that your HW detection is incomplete,
> which in combination with MSR accesses means that you may end up
> accessing MSRs that aren't at all what you think they should be.

Well I have some info from Intel, but the register is simply not always there. 
So instead of oopsing kernel, handling the exception is much better.

For further details please check:
http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/isn/Community/en-US/forums/thread/30229027.aspx

(last page) I may have more info in the future.

> Who supplies these imprecise MSR definitions anyway?

Yes Intel, please check the thread. Sometimes similar to catch 22 ;)

Rudolf
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