Patch "x86/speculation/l1tf: Drop the swap storage limit restriction when l1tf=off" has been added to the 4.20-stable tree

This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled

x86/speculation/l1tf: Drop the swap storage limit restriction when l1tf=off

to the 4.20-stable tree which can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary

The filename of the patch is:
x86-speculation-l1tf-drop-the-swap-storage-limit-restriction-when-l1tf-off.patch
and it can be found in the queue-4.20 subdirectory.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <[email protected]> know about it.

From: Michal Hocko <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2018 19:49:10 +0100
Subject: x86/speculation/l1tf: Drop the swap storage limit restriction when l1tf=off

From: Michal Hocko <[email protected]>

commit 5b5e4d623ec8a34689df98e42d038a3b594d2ff9 upstream.

Swap storage is restricted to max_swapfile_size (~16TB on x86_64) whenever the system is deemed affected by L1TF vulnerability. Even though the limit is quite high for most deployments it seems to be too restrictive for deployments which are willing to live with the mitigation disabled.

We have a customer to deploy 8x 6,4TB PCIe/NVMe SSD swap devices which is clearly out of the limit.

Drop the swap restriction when l1tf=off is specified. It also doesn't make much sense to warn about too much memory for the l1tf mitigation when it is forcefully disabled by the administrator.

[ tglx: Folded the documentation delta change ]

---
 Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt |    3 +++
 Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst              |    6 +++++-
 arch/x86/kernel/cpu/bugs.c                      |    3 ++-
 arch/x86/mm/init.c                              |    2 +-
 4 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

@@ -2096,6 +2096,9 @@
 			off
 				Disables hypervisor mitigations and doesn't
 				emit any warnings.
+				It also drops the swap size and available
+				RAM limit restriction on both hypervisor and
+				bare metal.
 
 			Default is 'flush'.
 

@@ -405,6 +405,9 @@ time with the option "l1tf=". The valid
 
   off		Disables hypervisor mitigations and doesn't emit any
 		warnings.
+		It also drops the swap size and available RAM limit restrictions
+		on both hypervisor and bare metal.
+
   ============  =============================================================
 
 The default is 'flush'. For details about L1D flushing see :ref:`l1d_flush`.

@@ -576,7 +579,8 @@ Default mitigations
   The kernel default mitigations for vulnerable processors are:
 
   - PTE inversion to protect against malicious user space. This is done
-    unconditionally and cannot be controlled.
+    unconditionally and cannot be controlled. The swap storage is limited
+    to ~16TB.
 
   - L1D conditional flushing on VMENTER when EPT is enabled for
     a guest.

@@ -1002,7 +1002,8 @@ static void __init l1tf_select_mitigatio
 #endif
 
 	half_pa = (u64)l1tf_pfn_limit() << PAGE_SHIFT;
-	if (e820__mapped_any(half_pa, ULLONG_MAX - half_pa, E820_TYPE_RAM)) {
+	if (l1tf_mitigation != L1TF_MITIGATION_OFF &&
+			e820__mapped_any(half_pa, ULLONG_MAX - half_pa, E820_TYPE_RAM)) {
 		pr_warn("System has more than MAX_PA/2 memory. L1TF mitigation not effective.\n");
 		pr_info("You may make it effective by booting the kernel with mem=%llu parameter.\n",
 				half_pa);

@@ -931,7 +931,7 @@ unsigned long max_swapfile_size(void)
 
 	pages = generic_max_swapfile_size();
 
-	if (boot_cpu_has_bug(X86_BUG_L1TF)) {
+	if (boot_cpu_has_bug(X86_BUG_L1TF) && l1tf_mitigation != L1TF_MITIGATION_OFF) {
 		/* Limit the swap file size to MAX_PA/2 for L1TF workaround */
 		unsigned long long l1tf_limit = l1tf_pfn_limit();
 		/*

Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from [email protected] are

queue-4.20/x86-speculation-l1tf-drop-the-swap-storage-limit-restriction-when-l1tf-off.patch