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saturnalia0
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 13 Oct 2016
Posts: 134
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 Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 9:48 am Post subject: Should I get retpoline? |
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I was updating my kernel today after a long period of inactivity and was presented with the following option:
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Avoid speculative indirect branches in kernel (RETPOLINE) [Y/n/?] (NEW)
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As I understand it this is related to spectre. I found the following article, which mentions that:
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The strategies used to make this prediction vary between hardware implementations, they are commonly not isolated between security domains to reduce complexity and improve performance.
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https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7625886
So I assume enabling this would have an impact in performance. This is a home computer. It only uses a web browser with javascript disabled and some trusted(TM) applications to connect to the internet. Is spectre such a worry in this case such that retpoline should be enable, or is the performance impact negligible enough to enable it nevertheless? |
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Perfect Gentleman
Veteran
Joined: 18 May 2014
Posts: 1246
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| Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 11:14 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Compile kernel with the retpoline compiler options to guard against kernel-to-user data leaks by avoiding speculative indirect branches. Requires a compiler with -mindirect-branch=thunk-extern support for full protection. The kernel may run slower. |
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depontius
Advocate
Joined: 05 May 2004
Posts: 3509
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| Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2018 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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If this is just a home system, and if you're not a gamer looking for every last fps of performance, I'd let the retpoline be turned on. As much as you think you've done everything you can to restrict internet access to safe programs, better safe than sorry.
If I had a "must have every last spec of performance" situation, I'd be inclined to have that on a more tightly-controlled installation. Maybe no web browser installed, maybe firewalled with only white-list access so you can only get in and out via known service paths.
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