linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/3] x86/microcode: support for microcode update in Xen dom0

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Message-ID: <4E962A27.4090509@goop.org>
Date:	Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:00:39 -0700
From:	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
CC:	Borislav Petkov <bp@...64.org>,
	Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@...cle.com>,
	the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>,
	Tigran Aivazian <tigran@...azian.fsnet.co.uk>,
	Xen Devel <xen-devel@...ts.xensource.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy.fitzhardinge@...rix.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] x86/microcode: support for microcode update in Xen
 dom0

On 10/12/2011 04:55 PM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> On 10/12/2011 04:40 PM, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote:
>> On 10/12/2011 03:49 PM, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>> The stickiest part of all of this is where to leave the microcode so
>>> the kernel can get to it way early.  We could use the linked list, but
>>> that would mean bootloader enabling; another idea was to stick it as a
>>> prefix to the initramfs identified by a signature.
>>
>> I think it would be easiest for the multiboot case if it were a separate
>> file, but I don't feel I'm really up on all the details.
>
> For the multiboot case, yes of course.
>
> Some bootloaders allow initramfs to be concatenated from multiple
> files; unfortunately I'm not sure if Grub ever grew that capability. 
> Sigh.

Presumably we'd want some way to make all possible microcode files
available to the hypervisor/kernel so that there's no need to construct
the bootloader config for a specific CPU vendor (or worse, CPU model). 
So that would need either some way of specifying multiple files, or a
wrapper which can contain multiple files?

    J

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