* Kees Cook <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Also note the assertive tone: if this Kconfig feature is eanbled, we say
> > that
> > the kernel address _will_ be randomized, and we should make sure it is. (If
> > for some weird reason randomization fails we should warn prominently during
> > bootup.)
>
> This will need some thought... is it better to fail to boot or to boot
> without
> entropy? As-is, it's possible to randomly position the kernel base address at
> exactly the location it was going to boot without KASLR too, yet this is
> still
> considered random...
I think we should boot but print a prominent warning. On real systems it's not
supposed to happen, right? So we want to know if it happens, but don't want to
hassle the user with breaking the system by not booting.
> > Also, could we always mix the i8254 timer into this as well, not just when
> > RDTSC is unavailable?
>
> IIRC, hpa explicitly did not want to do this when he was making
> suggestions on this area. I would need to dig out the thread -- I
> can't find it now. I'd prefer to leave this as-is, since changing it
> would add yet another variable to the behavioral changes of this
> series.
Sure, can stay as-is for now.
Thanks,
Ingo
