Re: [PATCH] make CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL invisible and default

[Kees Cook]

On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 3:59 PM, Paul E. McKenney
<paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 08, 2012 at 03:40:57PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 3:37 PM, Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Paul E. McKenney
>> > <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Oct 08, 2012 at 03:07:24PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> >>> On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Paul E. McKenney
>> >>> <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >>> > On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 04:18:54PM -0400, Dave Jones wrote:
>> >>> >> On Sun, Oct 07, 2012 at 09:30:29AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
>> >>> >>
>> >>> >>  > > I think Kconfig is mostly what distro would like to use the thing is
>> >>> >>  > > the Kconfig text needs to be there upfront when its merged, not two
>> >>> >>  > > months later, since then it too late for a distro to notice.
>> >>> >>  > >
>> >>> >>  > > I'd bet most distros would read the warnings, but in a lot of cases
>> >>> >>  > > the warning don't exist until its too late.
>> >>> >>  >
>> >>> >>  > In the case of CONFIG_RCU_USER_QS you are quite right, the warning
>> >>> >>  > should have been there from the beginning and was not.  I suppose you
>> >>> >>  > could argue that the warning was not sufficiently harsh in the case of
>> >>> >>  > CONFIG_RCU_FAST_NO_HZ, but either way it did get ignored:
>> >>> >>
>> >>> >> Maybe if we had a universally agreed upon tag for kconfig, like
>> >>> >> "distro recommendation: N" that would make things obvious, and also allow
>> >>> >> those of us unfortunate enough to maintain distro kernels to have something
>> >>> >> to easily grep for.  This would also catch the case when you eventually (hopefully)
>> >>> >> flip from an N to a Y.
>> >>> >>
>> >>> >> There will likely still be some distros that will decide they know better
>> >>> >> (and I'm pretty sure eventually I'll find reason to do so myself), but it at least
>> >>> >> gives the feature maintainer the "I told you so" clause.
>> >>> >>
>> >>> >> Something we do quite often for our in-development kernels is enable something
>> >>> >> that's shiny, new and unproven, and then when we branch for a release, we turn
>> >>> >> it back off.  It would be great if a lot of this kind of thing could be more automated.
>> >>> >
>> >>> > One approach would be to have CONFIG_DISTRO, so that experimental
>> >>> > features could use "depends on !DISTRO", but also to have multiple
>> >>> > "BLEEDING" symbols.  For example, given a CONFIG_DISTRO_BLEEDING_HPC
>> >>> > and CONFIG_DISTRO_BLEEDING_RT, CONFIG_RCU_USER_QS might eventually
>> >>> > use the following clause:
>> >>> >
>> >>> >         depends on !DISTRO || DISTRO_BLEEDING_HPC || DISTRO_BLEEDING_RT
>> >>> >
>> >>> > A normal distro would define DISTRO, a distro looking to provide bleeding-edge
>> >>> > HPC or real-time features would also define DISTRO_BLEEDING_HPC or
>> >>> > DISTRO_BLEEDING_RT, respectively.
>> >>> >
>> >>> > Does that make sense, or am I being overly naive?
>> >>>
>> >>> I think we should avoid any global configs that disable things. We'll
>> >>> just end up in the same place with distros again.
>> >>
>> >> So you believe that we should taint the kernel or splat on boot to
>> >> warn distros off of features that might not be ready for 100 million
>> >> users?  Or do you have some other approach in mind?
>> >
>> > Personally, I think taint+printk seems like the right way to go.
>>
>> Actually, I think printk is sufficient. I don't want kernel taint to
>> become the new CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL. :)
>
> OK, I'll bite...
>
> Why would kernel taint be more likely to become the new CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL
> than printk() would?

I was imagining the case where distros were still turning lots of
stuff on, and they wanted a genuinely experimental thing anyway, then
they'd end up with all their kernels tainted. A printk is easier to
"live with", where as taint wouldn't be, I think.

-Kees

-- 
Kees Cook
Chrome OS Security
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