Re: [PATCH 1/3] x86, intel: Output microcode revision

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Wed May 25 2011 - 15:36:23 EST



* Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, 25 May 2011, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> >
> > So displaying a non-fatal 'info' message about it would in fact
> > be rather wise. Nothing scary, but we'd like to be informed.
>
> A printk with levels info or notice, I do agree to be a good idea.
> In fact, I like the idea a lot.
>
> WARN() and kernel tainting, which is what I understand was being
> proposed before, I cannot agree with.

Yeah, the taint is probably overdoing it - especially considering
that mixing certain steppings is explicitly supported.

> OTOH, IMO mismatched microcode should be grounds for more serious
> measures. And that includes fixing the annoying userspace ABI that
> encourages bad behaviour in the first place and makes it harder to
> do the proper thing.

Well, a problem the microcode driver has is that it needs that
microcode blob. So we cannot really load it right at bootup (unless
we promote the image to the initrd - somewhat hairy).

Thanks,

Ingo
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