linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] treewide: Rename "unencrypted" to "decrypted"

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Date:   Tue, 17 Mar 2020 22:06:02 +0100
From:   Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>
To:     Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>
Cc:     Borislav Petkov <bp@...e.de>, lkml <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "Schofield, Alison" <alison.schofield@...el.com>,
        Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
        Paul Mackerras <paulus@...ba.org>,
        Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
        Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>,
        Vasily Gorbik <gor@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@...ibm.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, x86@...nel.org,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        Marek Szyprowski <m.szyprowski@...sung.com>,
        Robin Murphy <robin.murphy@....com>,
        linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org, linux-s390@...r.kernel.org,
        iommu@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@....com>,
        "Shutemov, Kirill" <kirill.shutemov@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] treewide: Rename "unencrypted" to "decrypted"

On Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 01:35:12PM -0700, Dave Hansen wrote:
> On 3/17/20 4:18 AM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > Back then when the whole SME machinery started getting mainlined, it
> > was agreed that for simplicity, clarity and sanity's sake, the terms
> > denoting encrypted and not-encrypted memory should be "encrypted" and
> > "decrypted". And the majority of the code sticks to that convention
> > except those two. So rename them.
> 
> Don't "unencrypted" and "decrypted" mean different things?
> 
> Unencrypted to me means "encryption was never used for this data".
> 
> Decrypted means "this was/is encrypted but here is a plaintext copy".

Maybe but linguistical semantics is not the point here.

The idea is to represent a "binary" concept of memory being encrypted
or memory being not encrypted. And at the time we decided to use
"encrypted" and "decrypted" for those two things.

Do you see the need to differentiate a third "state", so to speak, of
memory which was never encrypted?

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.

https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette