Skip to content

Redundant kernel args #199

Description

@TommyTran732

According to the kernel's documentation:

auto,nosmt:
Mitigate all CPU vulnerabilities, disabling SMT if needed. This is for users who always want to be fully mitigated, even if it means losing SMT. Equivalent to:

  • l1tf=flush,nosmt [X86]
  • mds=full,nosmt [X86]
  • tsx_async_abort=full,nosmt [X86]
  • mmio_stale_data=full,nosmt [X86]
  • retbleed=auto,nosmt [X86]

Why are these other args being explicitly set in /etc/default/grub.d if mitigations=auto,nosmt is already being set?

There is a limit on number of characters that can be in the kernel args as well, and the kernel args we set will just get longer and longer over time. I don't think it is a good idea to waste the precious characters on these redundant args. Either we use mitigations=auto,nosmt (which should be the default anyways), or explicitly spell out which args to set so the user can easily customize them. There is really no reason to have both.

Activity

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions