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authorPawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com>2019-10-23 11:01:53 +0200
committerThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>2019-10-28 08:36:58 +0100
commit95c5824f75f3ba4c9e8e5a4b1a623c95390ac266 (patch)
tree435c7815c83cb35214bb13686e47422b66b25ef7 /Documentation/admin-guide
parent286836a70433fb64131d2590f4bf512097c255e1 (diff)
downloadlinux-95c5824f75f3ba4c9e8e5a4b1a623c95390ac266.tar.bz2
x86/cpu: Add a "tsx=" cmdline option with TSX disabled by default
Add a kernel cmdline parameter "tsx" to control the Transactional Synchronization Extensions (TSX) feature. On CPUs that support TSX control, use "tsx=on|off" to enable or disable TSX. Not specifying this option is equivalent to "tsx=off". This is because on certain processors TSX may be used as a part of a speculative side channel attack. Carve out the TSX controlling functionality into a separate compilation unit because TSX is a CPU feature while the TSX async abort control machinery will go to cpu/bugs.c. [ bp: - Massage, shorten and clear the arg buffer. - Clarifications of the tsx= possible options - Josh. - Expand on TSX_CTRL availability - Pawan. ] Signed-off-by: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com> Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Reviewed-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt26
1 files changed, 26 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
index a84a83f8881e..af4b1d95b08f 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -4848,6 +4848,32 @@
interruptions from clocksource watchdog are not
acceptable).
+ tsx= [X86] Control Transactional Synchronization
+ Extensions (TSX) feature in Intel processors that
+ support TSX control.
+
+ This parameter controls the TSX feature. The options are:
+
+ on - Enable TSX on the system. Although there are
+ mitigations for all known security vulnerabilities,
+ TSX has been known to be an accelerator for
+ several previous speculation-related CVEs, and
+ so there may be unknown security risks associated
+ with leaving it enabled.
+
+ off - Disable TSX on the system. (Note that this
+ option takes effect only on newer CPUs which are
+ not vulnerable to MDS, i.e., have
+ MSR_IA32_ARCH_CAPABILITIES.MDS_NO=1 and which get
+ the new IA32_TSX_CTRL MSR through a microcode
+ update. This new MSR allows for the reliable
+ deactivation of the TSX functionality.)
+
+ Not specifying this option is equivalent to tsx=off.
+
+ See Documentation/admin-guide/hw-vuln/tsx_async_abort.rst
+ for more details.
+
turbografx.map[2|3]= [HW,JOY]
TurboGraFX parallel port interface
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