[MODERATED] Re: Date/Time?

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Sun, May 20, 2018 at 04:59:04PM -0400, speck for Jon Masters wrote:
> * ARM. They have a new SMCC (Secure Monitor Call) interface (similar to
> the one they did for branch predictor invalidation for Spectre-v2) that
> will be wired up with kernel patches. Each of the vendors will implement
> the new SMCC in ATF (Arm Trusted Firmware) on their parts, using the
> best back-end mitigation (similar to microcode). Arm know to ping Thomas
> with those patches, yet this has not happened yet (to my knowledge), nor
> to Greg. Will has point on this in any case. He and the team are working
> hard on this. Still, I am saddened by these patches not being available
> prior to disclosure since this is not how we do things in the server
> space. But in anticipation that this would happen, I worked directly
> with Cavium (the only server-class CPU vendor with production RHEL
> support for which we need an answer tomorrow on our end) to create a
> firmware knob that can be used in the short term until this is fixed. I
> also have pinged all of the Arm server vendors to let them know I expect
> all of the SMCC wiring to be in place within the next few weeks.

Just heard from ARM, they are going to wait a week or so and then send
patches for inclusion in 4.18 and then send some backports for the older
kernels then.  The kernel patches are useless without firmware updates
and I don't know what the state of them are.

They also complained that they can not finalize their patches as they do
not know what we agreed on for the prctl() interface.  Which sucks as
that was hashed out here weeks ago.

Another proof of how when we are not "allowed" to talk to the right
people, Linux users suffer.  That is not ok.

thanks,

greg k-h