kernel/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt, branch linux-6.1.y

ata: libata: cleanup fua support detection

2026-02-06T15:44:04Z

[ Upstream commit 4d2e4980a5289ae31a1cff40d258b68573182a37 ] Move the detection of a device FUA support from ata_scsiop_mode_sense()/ata_dev_supports_fua() to device scan time in ata_dev_configure(). The function ata_dev_config_fua() is introduced to detect if a device supports FUA and this support is indicated using the new device flag ATA_DFLAG_FUA. In order to blacklist known buggy devices, the horkage flag ATA_HORKAGE_NO_FUA is introduced. Similarly to other horkage flags, the libata.force= arguments "fua" and "nofua" are also introduced to allow a user to control this horkage flag through the "force" libata module parameter. The ATA_DFLAG_FUA device flag is set only and only if all the following conditions are met: * libata.fua module parameter is set to 1 * The device supports the WRITE DMA FUA EXT command, * The device is not marked with the ATA_HORKAGE_NO_FUA flag, either from the blacklist or set by the user with libata.force=nofua * The device supports NCQ (while this is not mandated by the standards, this restriction is introduced to avoid problems with older non-NCQ devices). Enabling or diabling libata FUA support for all devices can now also be done using the "force=[no]fua" module parameter when libata.fua is set to 1. Signed-off-by: Damien Le Moal Reviewed-by: Hannes Reinecke Reviewed-by: Chaitanya Kulkarni Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig Reviewed-by: Johannes Thumshirn Reviewed-by: Niklas Cassel Stable-dep-of: c8c6fb886f57 ("ata: libata: Print features also for ATAPI devices") Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

fs: Add 'initramfs_options' to set initramfs mount options

2025-10-19T14:23:22Z

[ Upstream commit 278033a225e13ec21900f0a92b8351658f5377f2 ] When CONFIG_TMPFS is enabled, the initial root filesystem is a tmpfs. By default, a tmpfs mount is limited to using 50% of the available RAM for its content. This can be problematic in memory-constrained environments, particularly during a kdump capture. In a kdump scenario, the capture kernel boots with a limited amount of memory specified by the 'crashkernel' parameter. If the initramfs is large, it may fail to unpack into the tmpfs rootfs due to insufficient space. This is because to get X MB of usable space in tmpfs, 2*X MB of memory must be available for the mount. This leads to an OOM failure during the early boot process, preventing a successful crash dump. This patch introduces a new kernel command-line parameter, initramfs_options, which allows passing specific mount options directly to the rootfs when it is first mounted. This gives users control over the rootfs behavior. For example, a user can now specify initramfs_options=size=75% to allow the tmpfs to use up to 75% of the available memory. This can significantly reduce the memory pressure for kdump. Consider a practical example: To unpack a 48MB initramfs, the tmpfs needs 48MB of usable space. With the default 50% limit, this requires a memory pool of 96MB to be available for the tmpfs mount. The total memory requirement is therefore approximately: 16MB (vmlinuz) + 48MB (loaded initramfs) + 48MB (unpacked kernel) + 96MB (for tmpfs) + 12MB (runtime overhead) ≈ 220MB. By using initramfs_options=size=75%, the memory pool required for the 48MB tmpfs is reduced to 48MB / 0.75 = 64MB. This reduces the total memory requirement by 32MB (96MB - 64MB), allowing the kdump to succeed with a smaller crashkernel size, such as 192MB. An alternative approach of reusing the existing rootflags parameter was considered. However, a new, dedicated initramfs_options parameter was chosen to avoid altering the current behavior of rootflags (which applies to the final root filesystem) and to prevent any potential regressions. Also add documentation for the new kernel parameter "initramfs_options" This approach is inspired by prior discussions and patches on the topic. Ref: https://www.lightofdawn.org/blog/?viewDetailed=00128 Ref: https://landley.net/notes-2015.html#01-01-2015 Ref: https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/29/783 Ref: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.html#what-is-rootfs Signed-off-by: Lichen Liu Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250815121459.3391223-1-lichliu@redhat.com Tested-by: Rob Landley Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

x86/vmscape: Enable the mitigation

2025-09-11T15:19:15Z

Commit 556c1ad666ad90c50ec8fccb930dd5046cfbecfb upstream. Enable the previously added mitigation for VMscape. Add the cmdline vmscape={off|ibpb|force} and sysfs reporting. Signed-off-by: Pawan Gupta Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen Reviewed-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) Reviewed-by: Dave Hansen Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

x86/bugs: Add a Transient Scheduler Attacks mitigation

2025-07-10T13:59:54Z

commit d8010d4ba43e9f790925375a7de100604a5e2dba upstream. Add the required features detection glue to bugs.c et all in order to support the TSA mitigation. Co-developed-by: Kim Phillips Signed-off-by: Kim Phillips Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) Reviewed-by: Pawan Gupta Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

Revert "x86/bugs: Make spectre user default depend on MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2" on v6.6 and older

2025-06-27T10:07:36Z

This reverts commit 594dbf0a19d607f106ed552332b9b8fecd2b64a3 which is commit 98fdaeb296f51ef08e727a7cc72e5b5c864c4f4d upstream. commit 7adb96687ce8 ("x86/bugs: Make spectre user default depend on MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2") depends on commit 72c70f480a70 ("x86/bugs: Add a separate config for Spectre V2"), which introduced MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2. commit 72c70f480a70 ("x86/bugs: Add a separate config for Spectre V2") never landed in stable tree, thus, stable tree doesn't have MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2, that said, commit 7adb96687ce8 ("x86/bugs: Make spectre user default depend on MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2") has no value if the dependecy was not applied. Revert commit 7adb96687ce8 ("x86/bugs: Make spectre user default depend on MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2") in stable kernel which landed in in 5.4.294, 5.10.238, 5.15.185, 6.1.141 and 6.6.93 stable versions. Cc: David.Kaplan@amd.com Cc: peterz@infradead.org Cc: pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com Cc: mingo@kernel.org Cc: brad.spengler@opensrcsec.com Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # 6.6 6.1 5.15 5.10 5.4 Reported-by: Brad Spengler Reported-by: Salvatore Bonaccorso Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

x86/bugs: Make spectre user default depend on MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2

2025-06-04T12:40:10Z

[ Upstream commit 98fdaeb296f51ef08e727a7cc72e5b5c864c4f4d ] Change the default value of spectre v2 in user mode to respect the CONFIG_MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2 config option. Currently, user mode spectre v2 is set to auto (SPECTRE_V2_USER_CMD_AUTO) by default, even if CONFIG_MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2 is disabled. Set the spectre_v2 value to auto (SPECTRE_V2_USER_CMD_AUTO) if the Spectre v2 config (CONFIG_MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2) is enabled, otherwise set the value to none (SPECTRE_V2_USER_CMD_NONE). Important to say the command line argument "spectre_v2_user" overwrites the default value in both cases. When CONFIG_MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2 is not set, users have the flexibility to opt-in for specific mitigations independently. In this scenario, setting spectre_v2= will not enable spectre_v2_user=, and command line options spectre_v2_user and spectre_v2 are independent when CONFIG_MITIGATION_SPECTRE_V2=n. Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar Reviewed-by: Pawan Gupta Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: David Kaplan Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20241031-x86_bugs_last_v2-v2-2-b7ff1dab840e@debian.org Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

x86/its: Add "vmexit" option to skip mitigation on some CPUs

2025-05-18T06:21:26Z

commit 2665281a07e19550944e8354a2024635a7b2714a upstream. Ice Lake generation CPUs are not affected by guest/host isolation part of ITS. If a user is only concerned about KVM guests, they can now choose a new cmdline option "vmexit" that will not deploy the ITS mitigation when CPU is not affected by guest/host isolation. This saves the performance overhead of ITS mitigation on Ice Lake gen CPUs. When "vmexit" option selected, if the CPU is affected by ITS guest/host isolation, the default ITS mitigation is deployed. Signed-off-by: Pawan Gupta Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen Reviewed-by: Josh Poimboeuf Reviewed-by: Alexandre Chartre Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

x86/its: Enable Indirect Target Selection mitigation

2025-05-18T06:21:26Z

commit f4818881c47fd91fcb6d62373c57c7844e3de1c0 upstream. Indirect Target Selection (ITS) is a bug in some pre-ADL Intel CPUs with eIBRS. It affects prediction of indirect branch and RETs in the lower half of cacheline. Due to ITS such branches may get wrongly predicted to a target of (direct or indirect) branch that is located in the upper half of the cacheline. Scope of impact =============== Guest/host isolation -------------------- When eIBRS is used for guest/host isolation, the indirect branches in the VMM may still be predicted with targets corresponding to branches in the guest. Intra-mode ---------- cBPF or other native gadgets can be used for intra-mode training and disclosure using ITS. User/kernel isolation --------------------- When eIBRS is enabled user/kernel isolation is not impacted. Indirect Branch Prediction Barrier (IBPB) ----------------------------------------- After an IBPB, indirect branches may be predicted with targets corresponding to direct branches which were executed prior to IBPB. This is mitigated by a microcode update. Add cmdline parameter indirect_target_selection=off|on|force to control the mitigation to relocate the affected branches to an ITS-safe thunk i.e. located in the upper half of cacheline. Also add the sysfs reporting. When retpoline mitigation is deployed, ITS safe-thunks are not needed, because retpoline sequence is already ITS-safe. Similarly, when call depth tracking (CDT) mitigation is deployed (retbleed=stuff), ITS safe return thunk is not used, as CDT prevents RSB-underflow. To not overcomplicate things, ITS mitigation is not supported with spectre-v2 lfence;jmp mitigation. Moreover, it is less practical to deploy lfence;jmp mitigation on ITS affected parts anyways. Signed-off-by: Pawan Gupta Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen Reviewed-by: Josh Poimboeuf Reviewed-by: Alexandre Chartre Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

proc: add config & param to block forcing mem writes

2024-10-17T13:21:39Z

[ Upstream commit 41e8149c8892ed1962bd15350b3c3e6e90cba7f4 ] This adds a Kconfig option and boot param to allow removing the FOLL_FORCE flag from /proc/pid/mem write calls because it can be abused. The traditional forcing behavior is kept as default because it can break GDB and some other use cases. Previously we tried a more sophisticated approach allowing distributions to fine-tune /proc/pid/mem behavior, however that got NAK-ed by Linus [1], who prefers this simpler approach with semantics also easier to understand for users. Link: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wiGWLChxYmUA5HrT5aopZrB7_2VTa0NLZcxORgkUe5tEQ@mail.gmail.com/ [1] Cc: Doug Anderson Cc: Jeff Xu Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Ard Biesheuvel Cc: Christian Brauner Suggested-by: Linus Torvalds Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds Signed-off-by: Adrian Ratiu Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240802080225.89408-1-adrian.ratiu@collabora.com Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

clocksource: Scale the watchdog read retries automatically

2024-08-14T11:52:57Z

[ Upstream commit 2ed08e4bc53298db3f87b528cd804cb0cce066a9 ] On a 8-socket server the TSC is wrongly marked as 'unstable' and disabled during boot time on about one out of 120 boot attempts: clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU227: wd-tsc-wd excessive read-back delay of 153560ns vs. limit of 125000ns, wd-wd read-back delay only 11440ns, attempt 3, marking tsc unstable tsc: Marking TSC unstable due to clocksource watchdog TSC found unstable after boot, most likely due to broken BIOS. Use 'tsc=unstable'. sched_clock: Marking unstable (119294969739, 159204297)<-(125446229205, -5992055152) clocksource: Checking clocksource tsc synchronization from CPU 319 to CPUs 0,99,136,180,210,542,601,896. clocksource: Switched to clocksource hpet The reason is that for platform with a large number of CPUs, there are sporadic big or huge read latencies while reading the watchog/clocksource during boot or when system is under stress work load, and the frequency and maximum value of the latency goes up with the number of online CPUs. The cCurrent code already has logic to detect and filter such high latency case by reading the watchdog twice and checking the two deltas. Due to the randomness of the latency, there is a low probabilty that the first delta (latency) is big, but the second delta is small and looks valid. The watchdog code retries the readouts by default twice, which is not necessarily sufficient for systems with a large number of CPUs. There is a command line parameter 'max_cswd_read_retries' which allows to increase the number of retries, but that's not user friendly as it needs to be tweaked per system. As the number of required retries is proportional to the number of online CPUs, this parameter can be calculated at runtime. Scale and enlarge the number of retries according to the number of online CPUs and remove the command line parameter completely. [ tglx: Massaged change log and comments ] Signed-off-by: Feng Tang Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner Tested-by: Jin Wang Tested-by: Paul E. McKenney Reviewed-by: Waiman Long Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240221060859.1027450-1-feng.tang@intel.com Stable-dep-of: f2655ac2c06a ("clocksource: Fix brown-bag boolean thinko in cs_watchdog_read()") Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin