Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH] Add deblob support only for python3

[Michał Górny]

On Fri, 2021-07-23 at 20:44 +0900, Alice wrote:
> On 7/23/21 8:29 PM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > > > > On Fri, 23 Jul 2021, Alice  wrote:
> >
> > > On 7/23/21 6:04 AM, Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> > > > Maybe this is a stupid question, but what is USE=deblob doing these days
> > > > anyway? I thought that all nonfree firmware had been removed from the
> > > > kernel tree (with version 4.14) and was provided separately by the
> > > > sys-kernel/linux-firmware package?
> >
> > > There are still users that want a full libre(deblob) kernel.
> > > There are also distributions built around libre(deblob) kernel.
> > > deblob is still removing many modules from the kernel that are non-free
> > > you can see for exemple is removing things also on most recent kernels
> > > https://www.fsfla.org/svn/fsfla/software/linux-libre/releases/tags/5.13-gnu/deblob-5.13
> >
> > I know, but I still wonder what it actually does. I've checked the first
> > 10 or so files in their list, and they all say in their header that they
> > are under a free software license. So does that mean the license info in
> > these files is wrong? If not, then why is the script touching them?
> >
> > Also, (e.g.) this:
> >
> > > announce MICROCODE_INTEL - "Intel microcode patch loading support"
> > > reject_firmware arch/x86/kernel/cpu/microcode/intel.c
> > > clean_blob arch/x86/kernel/cpu/microcode/intel.c
> > > clean_blob arch/x86/events/intel/core.c
> > > clean_kconfig arch/x86/Kconfig MICROCODE_INTEL
> > > clean_mk CONFIG_MICROCODE_INTEL arch/x86/kernel/cpu/microcode/Makefile
> >
> > IIUC, it will disable CPU microcode updates. The code being removed is
> > entirely free (but it could load some non-free third-party microcode).
> > Do we really endorse that, from a security (spectre, meltdown, etc.)
> > point of view? Note that the ex-factory microcode of these CPUs is
> > already non-free, so arguably rejecting updates for it doesn't change
> > anything.
> >
> > Ulrich
> >
>
>
> Gentoo is about choice. if there are users that want to use deblob I
> don't see why we don't have to add the option.
>
> do you want to suggest any warn message that deblob option can give from
> a security point of view ?

If deblob indeed makes things vulnerable, it must be at least masked via
use.mask.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny