Response to Meltdown and Spectre

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 3 Feb 2018 19:21:56 -0600 (CST), Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>On Sat, February 3, 2018 7:00 pm, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>> On 2018-02-03, "Valeri Galtsev" <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>  
>>> With all due respect, one person saying, it didn't affect me,
>>> doesn't prove it is not disastrous for somebody else. Even if it is
>>> one machine out of thousand that is "bricked" for some time, it is
>>> a disaster for sysadmin who has that machine as a production
>>> server  
>>
>> Of course, but who at all is saying that Intel's microcode updates
>> have "bricked" any machines?  This appears to be an entirely spurious
>> claim, based on nothing other than grievous exaggeration that turns
>> "higher system reboots" into "bricked". You guys are talking each
>> other into a frenzy of fear over nothing.  
>
>For all production server I run any reboot that is not scheduled by
>admins is ultimate disaster, so it is equivalent to "bricked" machine.
>That hardware can not be further used as production server, but "mere"
>fact or reboot is ultimate disaster itself.
>
>I bet I am not the only sysadmin with this point of view. That is why I
>said production server is by no means comparable to sobody's home
>workstation. But I bet many people have the same attitude to their home
>workstations as I have to servers I am responsible for. Well, I for one
>have the same attitude to all my computers, including laptops, and as a
>sysadmin - to all computers of people I support.
>
>Of course, some people may have different point of view on this, which
>does not deprive me of expecting from my hardware to work without
>"glitches".
>
>My apologies for being edgy. These things make me such.
>

Valeri, consider to run a server for testng purpose based upon an Intel
CPU, but don't use Meltdown and Spectre fixes, then try to get
unauthorised access via a network, by using the Meltdown and Spectre
vulnerability. Please, after doing so, report back.