Re: [PATCH] x86/srso: Correct the mitigation status when SMT is disabled

[Borislav Petkov]

On Tue, Aug 15, 2023 at 12:58:31PM -0700, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> AFAICT, nowhere in the spec does it say the SRSO_NO bit won't get set by
> future (fixed) HW.  In fact I'd expect it will, similar to other *_NO
> flags.

I'm pretty sure it won't.

SRSO_NO is synthesized by the hypervisor *software*. Nothing else.

It is there so that you don't check microcode version in the guest which
is nearly impossible anyway.

> Regardless, here SRSO_NO seems to mean two different things: "reported
> safe by host (or HW)" and "not reported safe on Zen1/2 with SMT not
> possible".

Huh?

> Also, in this code, the SRSO_NO+SMT combo doesn't seem logically
> possible, as srso_show_state() only gets called if X86_BUG_SRSO is set,
> which only happens if SRSO_NO is not set by the HW/host in the first
> place.  So here, if boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_SRSO_NO), it means SRSO_NO
> was manually set by srso_select_mitigation(), and SMT can't possibly be
> enabled.

Have you considered the case where Linux would set SRSO_NO when booting
on future hardware, which is fixed?

There SRSO_NO and SMT will very much be possible.

> Instead of piggybacking on SRSO_NO, which is confusing, why not just add
> a new mitigation type, like:

I had a separate mitigation defintion but then realized I don't need it
because, well, it is not really a mitigation - it is a case where the
machine is not affected.

For example, I have a Zen2 laptop here with SMT disabled in the hardware
which is also not affected.

And also, the rest of the SMT disabled cases in bugs.c do check
sched_smt_active() too, without having a separate mitigation.

That's why.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.

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