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Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:33 pm
by Pjotr
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:29 pm
Pjotr wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:17 pm But don't think for a minute that your positive experience has any predictive value at all, for other people.
The general advice is valid: do *not* use UKUU for installing kernels for everyday use. Only for testing.
I was just giving another perspective based on my positive experience. I don't see what validity the "general advice" has, generalizing from the negativity. If there is statistic data supporting your "general advice", then I can regard my positive experience as a lucky strike
Madonn'.... :roll:

Didn't you read the two links that I gave earlier in this thread?
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=263587#p1428559

Or don't you attach any value to the Ubuntu wiki and the opinion of OMGubuntu?

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:54 pm
by Sir Charles
I can still not see how your negative advice has any general validity.
Still, if there is any statistic base showing that in majority of cases a kernel upgrade, not might, but has actually lead to unstable and unreliable systems, then I give you your point. In lack of such statistic data, I don't see any harm in testing a mainline kernel and if everything works satisfactorily, keep using it until next release. As a general rule, personally, I don't take general rules too seriously unless there is a factual ground for it.

Edit: here is the result of running: grep . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/* with kernel 4.15.2

Code: Select all

/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/meltdown:Mitigation: PTI
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v1:Mitigation: __user pointer sanitization
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2:Mitigation: Full generic retpoline - vulnerable module loaded
 

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:59 pm
by Pjotr
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:54 pm I can still not see how your negative advice has any general validity.
Sigh.... It's not just *my* negative advice. It's backed by the Ubuntu wiki and OMGubuntu. In this I rely not only on my common sense, but also on trustworthy experts, even if they don't supply me with all kinds of statistic data.

But do as you please, brother. Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. :mrgreen:

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:03 pm
by Sir Charles
I am sorry, I am not a church-goer :mrgreen:

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:03 pm
by Pjotr
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:03 pm I am sorry, I am not a church-goer :mrgreen:
That quote isn't Christian. :lol:

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:14 pm
by Sir Charles
Pjotr wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:03 pm
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:03 pm I am sorry, I am not a church-goer :mrgreen:
That quote isn't Christian. :lol:
:lol: , You got me!

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:18 pm
by DAMIEN1307
hi pjotr...Boswell’s Johnson?...really...loved it...lol...lol...lol...DAMIEN

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:20 pm
by Sir Charles
Pjotr wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:59 pm Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. :mrgreen:
"Whom the Lord wishes to ruin, he first deprives of reason."

Pardon me your Highness, for not recognizing you as the Voice of Reason, or God forbidden, the Voice of the Almighty Himself! You seem to be in the know of God's wishes.

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:22 pm
by michael louwe
@ Marziano, .......
Marziano wrote:That's exactly what I did, taking my liberty to choose what kernel to use, using this very handy tool for installing kernel 4.15 the very day it was released, and my system is no less unstable or unreliable than before. What's more, while waiting for the supported kernels to get patched for Spectre 2, I can be running one which is already patched. At least partially, since my CPU won't be receiving any firmware update any time soon, if ever.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/linux-ke ... 9579.shtml (28 Jan 2018 - Linux Kernel 4.15 Officially Released, Includes Patches for Meltdown and Spectre)
"It is worth pointing out that it's not like we're "done" with spectre/meltdown. There is more work pending (arm, spectre-v1, misc details), and perhaps equally importantly, to actually get the biggest fix for the indirect branch mitigations, you need not just the kernel updates, you need to have a compiler with support for the "retpoline" indirect branch model," says Linus Torvalds in the mailing list announcement.
.
Also, if the Ubuntu kernels get updated with the Retpoline feature, the Ubuntu repositories and programs(eg those preinstalled like Firefox and LibreOffice) have to be recompiled or updated also. If you are running LM with kernel.org's 4.15, your Ubuntu repositories and programs may not be recompiled or updated for Retpoline. This may mean that it was futile for you to install kernel.org's 4.15.

Why the rush.? Some who rushed to install the Meltdown and Spectre patches ended up with borked or bricked computers. It's better for LM users to wait for the patches to be released by Ubuntu. LM and Windows 32bit users have no choice but to wait.
... Seems, Windows users won't be getting the Retpoline feature for Spectre 2. They have no choice but to wait for Intel and AMD to release their CPU BIOS firmware updates. Windows users running Intel CPUs that are more than 5 years old have to wait even longer.

LM is not a bleeding edge Rolling release that usually adopts the newest Linux kernel asap, ie LM is a Stable or LTS release based on Ubuntu LTS.

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:25 pm
by Pjotr
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:20 pm
Pjotr wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:59 pm Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. :mrgreen:
"Whom the Lord wishes to ruin, he first deprives of reason."

Pardon me your Highness, for not recognizing you as the Voice of Reason, or God forbidden, the Voice of the Almighty Himself! You seem to be in the know of God's wishes.
Too much credit.... I don't claim that, nor to be able to deprive people of reason. But sometimes I can recognize a potential victim of that. :lol:

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:31 pm
by Sir Charles
Pjotr wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:25 pm Too much credit.... I don't claim that, nor to be able to deprive people of reason. But sometimes I can recognize a potential victim of that. :lol:
This is waist of my time. Whatever! I LIVE at my own risk, a kernel is just a kernel!

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:37 pm
by Sir Charles
@michael louwe
You have very good points there. I am not advocating that LM users should upgrade to a mainline kernel. I have done it while waiting for the supported kernels to come with the patches. I am not experiencing any issues and therefore I don't see any harm in testing. Part of the reason is I want to know how long my hardware will keep up with the evolution of the kernels.

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:44 pm
by thx-1138
...Michael -> viewtopic.php?p=1428543#p1428543
I repeat, they *don't* have to be recompiled: they might just as well remain 'as is'. Nothing breaks in userland to speak of.
Using a kernel which is itself built with retpoline doesn't prevent you from running apps which have not been built with retpoline...
You can have a retpolined kernel (the most important), retpolined applications, or even better, both for maximum effect...
Now, which (& how many packages out of the approximately 55000) Canonical will recompile with retpoline, who knows...

That is, regardless of whether someone should be using mainline kernels as their daily driver...

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:44 pm
by michael louwe
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:20 pm
Pjotr wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:59 pm Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat. :mrgreen:
"Whom the Lord wishes to ruin, he first deprives of reason."
From Google Translate;
Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat = The god wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason
Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat = Whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason (God = the Lord)

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:58 pm
by Sir Charles
thx-1138 wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:44 pm ...Michael -> viewtopic.php?p=1428543#p1428543

I repeat, they *don't* have to be recompiled: they might just as well remain 'as is'. Nothing breaks in userland to speak of.
Using a kernel which is itself built with retpoline doesn't prevent you from running apps which have not been built with retpoline...
You can have a retpolined kernel (the most important), retpolined applications, or even better, both for maximum effect...
Now, which (& how many packages out of the approximately 55000) Canonical will recompile with retpoline, who knows...

That is, regardless of whether someone should be using mainline kernels as their daily driver...
I assure you , if any of my installed or will-be-installed apps from the repositories as they are now, misbehave or breaks something, and I can relate that to the kernel I am using, I will report that right here. Let's be honest, the thing is how can I be sure that the breakage is due to the kernel. Some people get their system out of order with an ordinary update. People with much longer time than me in these forums should know that better than I do.

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 5:56 pm
by thx-1138
...Marziano, somehow you keep insisting on this or that, and i don't see the point in doing so.
Arguing just for the sake of arguing probably - it runs across most of mediterranean people i think ;-)

Mainline kernels are not supported via Canonical. Actually, i've only seen them suggesting to people trying such out on Launchpad bug reports, when the bug report is slightly...weird and/or hard for them to resolve out the box, or when they don't consider it worths the trouble of tracking down and re-writing the offending piece of code (the work has been done elsewhere / upstream, so why bother...). This should tell you something.

If you run into some creepy underlying bug with mainline, chances are you might notice it way much later. Simple example would be, patches to ext4 or other filesystems that weren't that much great in the first place, and eventually lead to data corruption. Now, this can happily happen with Canonical's own kernels as well, but chances are you'll notice it via a bug report over at Launchpad earlier. Unless you tell me that you're daily scraping the upstream's mailing lists. Also, they're somewhat older, eg. now 4.13 while upstream 4.15, which means more time spent testing it & more eyes to look into things: one thing is a kernel series that's been out there for a few months, and another matter one that was released merely few days ago.

Some stuff / patches aren't available when using mainline as well. Those can be of any nature, and some of them also eventually get pushed from Canonical upstream. Out of my mind, one of the very first things that doesn't work when you've installed mainline is for example ureadahead. Pretty common app to optimize boot times under non-ssd disks.

Last but not least, the 'common' logic says to try using the kernel that your distro provides - unless you're an expert. Why? Because others use it as well, so if anything misbehaves, you can use your good old friend Google to find similar reports, ask other users of the same distro if they experienced the same symptoms, or just check the bug reports for it in the relevant forums / askubuntu / Launchpad and the likes. Of course, with mainline, you can still always use Bugzilla, but you shouldn't really expect them there to take you by the hand...

Considering my own limitations knowledge-wise, and also my spare time available to resolve potential issues, i don't find really convenient using such as a daily driver for all the reasons described above. Under very special circumstances, and for a limited time, maybe - and then back to the well-known and safer territory. And if talking about using the very latest one available, then i furthermore also don't find it very wise.
I can't (and won't) tell you what to do, and what to not do. I simply told you what I do. Other than that: you are always free to do *whatever* you want, regardless of...'rules' or *no-rules*. Your machine, your data, your spare time, and, above it all, your responsibility to troubleshoot it...the easy way or the hard way.

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:00 pm
by Sir Charles
thx-1138 wrote: I can't (and won't) tell you what to do, and what to not do. I simply told you what I do. Other than that: you are always free to do *whatever* you want, regardless of...'rules' or *no-rules*. Your machine, your data, your spare time, and, above it all, your responsibility to troubleshoot it...the easy way or the hard way.
Me too, I simply told what I did/do. If anyone would point out to me where in my previous posts I have advocated for a general use of mainline kernel, I would be grateful. I don't insist on one or other thing just for the sake of it. But if feel I need an explanation for the "why" of something, I will push for it, specially when it goes against my own experience. And of course, if I feel generalities being pushed to my face, I will question even more, but
it runs across most of mediterranean people i think
Thank you for taking your time for explaining things. I understand perfectly, the conservative approach of Linux Mint for the sake of stability. To be honest, I am personally growing, little by little away from it. I prefer the rapid movement of an spider with legs adaptive to the terrain, rather than the slow walk of a giant, scared of breaking its legs all the time.
But you said it, what can you do with a Mediterranean nature, unruly, fiery, passionate and simply dazzling :D

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:27 pm
by Pjotr
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:00 pm I understand perfectly, the conservative approach of Linux Mint for the sake of stability. To be honest, I am personally growing, little by little away from it. I prefer the rapid movement of an spider with legs adaptive to the terrain, rather than the slow walk of a giant, scared of breaking its legs all the time.
Then you're definitely using the wrong distribution alright. You want an Alfa Romeo like Fedora, not a Toyota like Linux Mint. :mrgreen:

Divertiti alla festa: https://getfedora.org/it/

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 8:04 pm
by Sir Charles
Pjotr wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:27 pm
Marziano wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 7:00 pm I understand perfectly, the conservative approach of Linux Mint for the sake of stability. To be honest, I am personally growing, little by little away from it. I prefer the rapid movement of an spider with legs adaptive to the terrain, rather than the slow walk of a giant, scared of breaking its legs all the time.
Then you're definitely using the wrong distribution alright. You want an Alfa Romeo like Fedora, not a Toyota like Linux Mint. :mrgreen:

Divertiti alla festa: https://getfedora.org/it/
Yes, I had to come to the realization by running it as my my main drive for a time. But Mint is and will be like a high school love, my point of entry to the world of GNU/Linux. But honestly, between you and me, wouldn't you like to drive along Côte d'Azur in an Alfa, rather than a Toyota? Apparently, I like things alfa and having a character of Romeo, I can fall in love with the beauty of Mint, but I simply will love the freshness of something like Fedora. Thanks for the reminder.
Buon weekend!

Re: Is LTS 4.9.79 patched for spectre

Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2018 1:47 am
by deepakdeshp
If we install any kernel and it doesn't work out, we can always fall back to the old kernel in recovery mode.
Is there any way unknowingly or knowingly to Bork the system due to a new kernel?