[PATCH][v3] x86/bugs: Fix GDS mitigation selecting when mitigation is off

From: lirongqing
Date: Mon Aug 18 2025 - 22:35:23 EST


From: Li RongQing <lirongqing@xxxxxxxxx>

The current GDS mitigation logic incorrectly returns early when the
attack vector mitigation is turned off, which leads to two problems:

1. CPUs without ARCH_CAP_GDS_CTRL support are incorrectly marked with
GDS_MITIGATION_OFF when they should be marked as
GDS_MITIGATION_UCODE_NEEDED.

2. The mitigation state checks and locking verification that follow are
skipped, which means:
- fail to detect if the mitigation was locked
- miss the warning when trying to disable a locked mitigation

Remove the early return to ensure proper mitigation state handling. This
allows:
- Proper mitigation classification for non-ARCH_CAP_GDS_CTRL CPUs
- Complete mitigation state verification

The change fixes the following runtime issues because mitigation is off
in non-ARCH_CAP_GDS_CTRL CPUs:

[ 2.809147] unchecked MSR access error: WRMSR to 0x123 (tried to write 0x0000000000000010) at rIP: 0xffffffffb34527b8 (update_gds_msr+0x38/0xe0)
[ 2.809147] Call Trace:
[ 2.809147] <TASK>
[ 2.809147] identify_secondary_cpu+0x72/0x90
[ 2.809147] start_secondary+0x7a/0x140
[ 2.809147] common_startup_64+0x13e/0x141
[ 2.809147] </TASK>
[ 2.809147] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[ 2.809147] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 0 at arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c:1053 update_gds_msr+0x9b/0xe0

Fixes: 8c7261abcb7ad ("x86/bugs: Add attack vector controls for GDS")
Suggested-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Li RongQing <lirongqing@xxxxxxxxx>
---
Diff with v2: refine the commit header and Reviewed-by: Pawan Gupta
Diff with v1: directly remove return

arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c | 1 -
1 file changed, 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c
index b74bf93..9e0b9bf 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c
@@ -1071,7 +1071,6 @@ static void __init gds_select_mitigation(void)
gds_mitigation = GDS_MITIGATION_FULL;
else {
gds_mitigation = GDS_MITIGATION_OFF;
- return;
}
}

--
2.9.4