Re: [PATCH 0/2] x86/fred: enable FRED by default

[Borislav Petkov]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 09:22:35AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Well, that's easy. I just didn't want to change existing behavior. If that is
> your policy decision then I'm fine with that.
> 
> We don't even need a new function; it is actually an even smaller change to
> the code than this patchset version, so I'll rev the patchset.
> 
> It WOULD be good to have a global function to parse boolean arguments in a
> kernel-coherent manner, but that is out of scope for this patchset.

Right.

> > Because you should not poke at clearing CPUID features unless you know what
> > you're doing and this cmdline option should not exist at all. But we have it
> > so...
> > 
> 
> Well, it is useful for testing code paths for legacy hardware.

... which would presume you know what you're doing.

clearcpuid= is not something you or I or anyone else wants to debug when
people start clearing random CPUID bits without knowing any better.

Thus the tainting.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.

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