Re: [PATCH 2/2] cpu: intel, amd: mask cleared cpuid features

From: Vladimir Davydov
Date: Wed Jul 25 2012 - 07:40:53 EST


On 07/25/2012 02:43 PM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 02:31:23PM +0400, Vladimir Davydov wrote:
So, you prefer adding some filtering of /proc/cpuinfo into the
mainstream kernel
That's already there right? And your 1/2 patch was making toggling those
bits easier.

(not now, later, for LXC to work) instead of enabling clearcpuid boot
option to mask CPUID features? IMO, the latter would look clearer.
Yes, but for reasons noted earlier, you cannot tweak all hardware CPUID
features as you want them.

So, having a software-only layer of tweaking /proc/cpuinfo or something
different you can come up with is the only option you have.

And even in that case, applications running in the container which
execute CPUID might fail in a strange manner when the corresponding
/proc/cpuinfo flag was cleared by you intentionally but the hardware
CPUID flag is there. In such situations, issues like that should
probably be sorted on a case-by-case basis I guess.

Thanks.


We've agreed that tweaking CPUID bits in kernel is not a good idea and it is better to think about virtualization of /proc/cpuinfo and using msr-tools.

Thank you for your time and feedback.
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