linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3] Documentation: Add section about CPU vulnerabilities for Spectre

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Date:   Mon, 17 Jun 2019 16:22:55 -0700
From:   Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@...ux.intel.com>
To:     Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
Cc:     Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoitov@...il.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Ben Greear <greearb@...delatech.com>, stable@...r.kernel.org,
        Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        Jun Nakajima <jun.nakajima@...el.com>,
        Jiri Kosina <jikos@...nel.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@....com>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        David Woodhouse <dwmw@...zon.co.uk>,
        Asit Mallick <asit.k.mallick@...el.com>,
        Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>,
        Jon Masters <jcm@...hat.com>,
        Waiman Long <longman9394@...il.com>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Mark Gross <mgross@...ux.intel.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, x86@...nel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] Documentation: Add section about CPU vulnerabilities
 for Spectre

On 6/17/19 3:16 PM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jun 2019 22:21:51 +0200 (CEST)
> Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de> wrote:
> 
>>> +Spectre variant 1 attacks take advantage of speculative execution of
>>> +conditional branches, while Spectre variant 2 attacks use speculative
>>> +execution of indirect branches to leak privileged memory. See [1] [5]
>>> +[7] [10] [11].  
>>
>> It would be great to actually link these [N] to the actual http link at the
>> bottom. No idea what's the best way to do that.
>>
>> Jonathan?
> 
> Append an underscore to the link text, so:
> 
> 	See [1_] [5_] ...
> 	
> Then, when adding the links:
> 
> 	.. _1: https://.../
> 
> There are other ways; see
> 
>     http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html#external-hyperlink-targets 
> 
> for the list.

Jonathan,

I want to actually have a generated reference section.  The method you suggested will generate
the reference link as a footer on the same page that refers to the link.  I haven't quite figured
out how to generate a proper bibliography like reference section with hyperlink after googling
for quite a while.


> 
>> The below renders horribly when converted to HTML
>>
>> You probably want to wrap these into a table
>>
>>> +	nospectre_v2	[X86] Disable all mitigations for the Spectre variant 2
>>> +			(indirect branch prediction) vulnerability. System may
>>> +			allow data leaks with this option, which is equivalent
>>> +			to spectre_v2=off.
>>> +
>>> +
>>> +        spectre_v2=     [X86] Control mitigation of Spectre variant 2
>>> +			(indirect branch speculation) vulnerability.
>>> +			The default operation protects the kernel from
>>> +			user space attacks.  
>>
>> Maybe Jonathan has a better idea.
> 
> The easiest thing is probably a definition list:
> 
> 	nospectre_v2
> 	    [X86] Disable all mitigations for the Spectre variant 2
> 	    (indirect branch prediction) ...
> 
> 	spectrev2=
> 	    ...
> 
> i.e. just move the descriptive text into an indented block below the term
> of interest.
> 

Thanks for this suggestion.

Tim