Re: [PATCH] cpu/speculation: Warn on unsupported mitigations= parameter

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Thu May 16 2019 - 04:18:28 EST



* Jiri Kosina <jikos@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Thu, 16 May 2019, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>
> > Currently, if the user specifies an unsupported mitigation strategy on
> > the kernel command line, it will be ignored silently. The code will
> > fall back to the default strategy, possibly leaving the system more
> > vulnerable than expected.
>
> Honestly, I am not convinced. We are not doing this for vast majority of
> other cmdline options either, if for any at all.

That's really a weakness - I've been bitten by this previously: I typoed
or mis-remembered a command line option and didn't have it while I
thought I had it.

Our boot-commandline library is pretty user-unfriendly.

Thanks,

Ingo