Re: [PATCH] x86/microcode/intel: Panic on partial microcode update

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Tue, 28 Jul 2026, Dave Hansen wrote:

> >> WARN(), please. Not panic().
> >>
> > PANIC_ON_WARN ....
> 
> Right. That's kinda my point.
> 
> If you are of the tin-foil-hat-wearing persuasion, you are paranoid and
> can't get enough panic()s in your life. You have panic_on_warn=1 to
> magically transform all warnings into panic()s and warm your heart.

 This OTOH seems excessive, there are warnings of varying severity, e.g. 
you don't usually want to kill your system on an odd error with a low 
importance peripheral.

 Thinking more as to not enforcing any policy while letting people apply 
one according to their site rules, how about communicating the condition 
via the severity level, such as say KERN_ALERT or maybe KERN_EMERG for 
failed authentication and plain ordinary KERN_ERR for a partial update 
that has succeeded authenticating?  Then the receiver of the messages can 
decide what to do about them, such as the BMC power-cycling the system.

 Have we come up with any guidelines beyond common sense as to how to 
apply these severity levels to any conditions encountered being reported?

  Maciej