linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] x86/speculation/l1tf: suggest what to do on systems with too much RAM

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Date:   Thu, 23 Aug 2018 15:07:53 -0700
From:   Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc:     Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, x86@...nel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>, stable@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86/speculation/l1tf: suggest what to do on systems with
 too much RAM

On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 10:05:20PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Thu 23-08-18 12:38:33, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > > There are people who care about L1TF mitigations. I am not going to
> > > question their motivation. In any case a hint how to make the mitigation
> > > active again sounds more useful than something that sounds as scary as
> > > "you are vulnerable".
> > 
> > FWIW an early version of these patches automatically limited the available
> > memory, but Linus pointed out that people likely prefer their memory.
> 
> Nobody is questioning that. The point is to give them a hint on how to
> make the mitigation active again without going to call for help. The
> message does tell them how to _enable_ it and point them to the
> documentation on how to _decide_.

On the message I guess there are two cases:

- either it's very little memory that is lost like in the 32GB + memory
hole case. In this case maybe it's better if we just limit automatically
if the overlap is small enough (<2GB perhaps?)

- Or it's a lot of memory then people are unlikely to want to lose their
memory and I don't think we really need the message either.

Also I checked the bug again and it looks like the reporter has an IvyBridge.
There is actually a better solution for those (anything Nehalem and newer)
because they internally have at least 44 bits in the cache, which
is good enough for the mitigation. Just need a quirk to override
the bit width in this case (will submit a patch)

-Andi