Re: [PATCH v14 1/7] x86/cet/ibt: Add Kconfig option for user-mode Indirect Branch Tracking

From: Yu, Yu-cheng
Date: Mon Oct 12 2020 - 16:30:03 EST


On 10/12/2020 12:15 PM, Cyrill Gorcunov wrote:
On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 08:45:24AM -0700, Yu-cheng Yu wrote:
...
+ the application support it. When this feature is enabled,
+ legacy non-IBT applications continue to work, but without
+ IBT protection.
+ Support for this feature is only known to be present on
+ processors released in 2020 or later. CET features are also
+ known to increase kernel text size by 3.7 KB.

It seems the last sentence is redundant - new features always bloat
the kernel code and precise size may differ depending on compiler
and options. Surely this can be patched on top.


This was added after some discussion in v12 about kernel text size [1]. I think these few extra words can help people who have older machines and want to save some space. Yes, like you said, if later we don't want this sentence, I will be happy to add a patch to remove it. Thanks for the feedback.

Yu-cheng

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-api/5e0a4005-45e3-3e88-e6e0-4ec31aad7eb9@xxxxxxxxx/