Re: [PATCH] x86/speculation: Add document to describe Spectre and its mitigations

From: Jonathan Corbet
Date: Fri Dec 28 2018 - 12:34:42 EST


On Fri, 21 Dec 2018 09:44:44 -0800
Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Andi and I have made an update to our draft of the Spectre admin guide.
> We may be out on Christmas vacation for a while. But we want to
> send it out for everyone to take a look.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Tim
>
> From: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> There are no document in admin guides describing
> Spectre v1 and v2 side channels and their mitigations
> in Linux.
>
> Create a document to describe Spectre and the mitigation
> methods used in the kernel.
>
> Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> Documentation/admin-guide/spectre.rst | 502 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 1 file changed, 502 insertions(+)
> create mode 100644 Documentation/admin-guide/spectre.rst

I only saw this now, seems I wasn't copied... I'll take a deeper look, but
I have a couple of meta comments:

- This could arguably go in the security book rather than the admin
guide. I don't really have a strong opinion on which is right at the
moment, but others might.

- Wherever it ends up, can you also please add it to the appropriate
index.rst file so it actually gets built with the rest of the docs?

Thanks,

jon