Re: [patch 07/11] [PATCH v2 07/10] Linux Patch #7

[Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2018, speck for Borislav Petkov wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 05:53:50AM -0400, speck for Jon Masters wrote:
> > I'd prefer that too. But we had this conversation with Thomas already
> > and he wanted a "disable" option. It was fairly clearly spelled out that
> > it was to be "mdd" or "ssbd" and therefore "spec_store_bypass_disable".
> 
> No, he wants "on,off,auto" so that we're in-line with PTI's and
> spectre_v2's options. So let's do:
> 
> spec_store_bypass=[on|off|auto]
> 
> and be done with the bikeshedding. The weather's too nice outside.

Nope. You're reverting the meaning again.

All mitigation options so far have on|off|auto where:

 - on:   enables the mitigation
 - off:  disabled the mitigation
 - auto: lets the kernel decided whether to enable/disable it

Now your name is: spec_store_bypass which is a performance feature and not
the mitigation. So Jon is about right that spec_store_bypass_disable
describes the mitigation and the on/off/auto have then consistent behaviour
with kpti and spectre_v2, which admittedly could have named better.

Thanks,

	tglx