On 1/13/20, Luis Chamberlain mcgrof@kernel.org wrote:
So what happens with you use the built-in firmware loader for the Intel microcode at this time? I am surprised this issue wasn't reported earlier, so thanks for picking it up, but to be complete such a change requires a bit more information.
What exactly happens now?
Before that 16-byte alignment patch was applied, my only one microcode built-in BLOB was "accidentally" 16-byte aligned.
After that patch was applied, new kernel System.map file was exactly same. So, for me that patch did not change anything.
Same 16-byte alignment before and after patch:
$ grep " _fw_.*_bin" System.map ffffffff81f55e90 r _fw_intel_ucode_06_8e_09_bin
Fix this by forcing all built-in firmware BLOBs to 16-byte alignment.
That's a huge stretch, see below.
I understand and to some degree agree.
So I'd like to determine first if we really need this.
We do need it. Violating Intel specs is not good. It may be that some processor models require aligned and some accept less aligned.
If set as a global new config option, we can use the same logic and allow an architecture override if the user / architecture kconfig configures it such:
config ARCH_DEFAULT_FIRMWARE_ALIGNMENT string "Default architecture firmware aligmnent" "4" if 64BIT "3" if !64BIT
config FIRMWARE_BUILTIN_ALIGN string "Built in firmware aligment requirement" default ARCH_DEFAULT_FIRMWARE_ALIGNMENT if !ARCH_CUSTOM_FIRMWARE_ALIGNMENT default ARCH_CUSTOM_FIRMWARE_ALIGNMENT_VAL if ARCH_CUSTOM_FIRMWARE_ALIGNMENT Some good description goes here
Or something like that.
It doesn't have to user visible config option, only default align changed when selected set of options are enabled.
My patch was intentionally minimal, without #ifdef spaghetti.