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0b62f6cb07
32-bit loads microcode before paging is enabled. The commit which
introduced that has zero justification in the changelog. The cover
letter has slightly more content, but it does not give any technical
justification either:
"The problem in current microcode loading method is that we load a
microcode way, way too late; ideally we should load it before turning
paging on. This may only be practical on 32 bits since we can't get
to 64-bit mode without paging on, but we should still do it as early
as at all possible."
Handwaving word salad with zero technical content.
Someone claimed in an offlist conversation that this is required for
curing the ATOM erratum AAE44/AAF40/AAG38/AAH41. That erratum requires
an microcode update in order to make the usage of PSE safe. But during
early boot, PSE is completely irrelevant and it is evaluated way later.
Neither is it relevant for the AP on single core HT enabled CPUs as the
microcode loading on the AP is not doing anything.
On dual core CPUs there is a theoretical problem if a split of an
executable large page between enabling paging including PSE and loading
the microcode happens. But that's only theoretical, it's practically
irrelevant because the affected dual core CPUs are 64bit enabled and
therefore have paging and PSE enabled before loading the microcode on
the second core. So why would it work on 64-bit but not on 32-bit?
The erratum:
"AAG38 Code Fetch May Occur to Incorrect Address After a Large Page is
Split Into 4-Kbyte Pages
Problem: If software clears the PS (page size) bit in a present PDE
(page directory entry), that will cause linear addresses mapped through
this PDE to use 4-KByte pages instead of using a large page after old
TLB entries are invalidated. Due to this erratum, if a code fetch uses
this PDE before the TLB entry for the large page is invalidated then it
may fetch from a different physical address than specified by either the
old large page translation or the new 4-KByte page translation. This
erratum may also cause speculative code fetches from incorrect addresses."
The practical relevance for this is exactly zero because there is no
splitting of large text pages during early boot-time, i.e. between paging
enable and microcode loading, and neither during CPU hotplug.
IOW, this load microcode before paging enable is yet another voodoo
programming solution in search of a problem. What's worse is that it causes
at least two serious problems:
1) When stackprotector is enabled, the microcode loader code has the
stackprotector mechanics enabled. The read from the per CPU variable
__stack_chk_guard is always accessing the virtual address either
directly on UP or via %fs on SMP. In physical address mode this
results in an access to memory above 3GB. So this works by chance as
the hardware returns the same value when there is no RAM at this
physical address. When there is RAM populated above 3G then the read
is by chance the same as nothing changes that memory during the very
early boot stage. That's not necessarily true during runtime CPU
hotplug.
2) When function tracing is enabled, the relevant microcode loader
functions and the functions invoked from there will call into the
tracing code and evaluate global and per CPU variables in physical
address mode. What could potentially go wrong?
Cure this and move the microcode loading after the early paging enable, use
the new temporary initrd mapping and remove the gunk in the microcode
loader which is required to handle physical address mode.
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231017211722.348298216@linutronix.de
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Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.