Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 14 Mar 2002 12:16:49 -0500 (EST) | From | Bill Davidsen <> | Subject | Re: 2.4.19pre3aa2 |
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On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 10:53:01AM -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> It's not a matter of codesize, it's a correctness issue in the source. > #ifndef CONFIG_M686 is wrong. It assumes a P6 is the only CPU family > in existence without the bug, despite the fact there are probably close > to a dozen others.
No problem with that, it obviously should be done for all chips which could have the bug, both Intel and faithful clones :-(
> > that many people would set it off not knowing was it was much less whether > > they needed it. This is not like a missing FPU where you can do a graceful > > reject of the instructions, if you have the bug and not the fix you are > > vulnerable to sudden total failures, correct? > > No. You at worse vulnerable to a malicious user running hand-crafted code > (no compiler generates this code-sequence) bringing down the machine.
Having the machine lock suddenly when user mode code is executed fits MY definition of sudden total failure! Malicious user meaning anyone who d/l something and runs it. Doesn't take malicious, just dumb. Somone wanting to try the new screen saver or some such.
> The proposal however was not to remove anything that we currently have. > Every kernel that is possible to be run on an affected box (i386/i486/i586) > would still have the workaround present. We just won't generate it in > Cyrix III, Athlon, Pentium 4, etc kernels..
As long as it's not something the user can easily set wrong. If they build a kernel for K6 and they have a P-II "stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward."
-- bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> CTO, TMR Associates, Inc Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.
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