Today's bloviated article contains just a single command...

[KGIII]

But it does contain a bunch of links to other articles.

I decided to write about one more way to find CPU information. I've covered this topic before, but not this method. So, it's sort of a 'completeness' thing, I guess. Also, it was an easy article to write and I wanted an easy day. I've written a bunch of articles and have done so consistently for quite a while. An easy day is nice.

How To: Find Your CPU Information • Linux Tips

Today's article shouldn't be all that long, as it's a subject touched on before, as we discuss how to find your CPU information.

linux-tips.us

Yup. It's an article. I didn't say it was a good one, but it is an article.

 

[xlbooyahlx]

Yup. It's an article. I didn't say it was a good one, but it is an article.

You never fail to crack me up.
I actually learnerd something from the article, so it wasn't in vain lol

 

[KGIII]

I actually learnerd something from the article, so it wasn't in vain lol

That's good. There are all sorts of ways to get some CPU information, depending on how much information you need.

I've published an article every other day since April 18, 2021...

I haven't written an article every other day, but almost. Sometimes I write a few of them (when I have time) and take a few days 'off'. This all started as a 'pandemic thing' and I kinda planned on maybe stopping after it was over, but I just haven't stopped yet.

I'm as amazed as you are that I've been this consistent.

There was actually a site before this, but it was on a 'free' domain name (even though I paid for it) and Google doesn't like .gq domain names. Also, those articles kinda sucked.

Well...

At least they were short and to the point.

Quite a few of those articles now redirect to the new domain. (I suppose it's not really new anymore.) But, the URL was https://linuxtips.gq - it's still available and I use it as a redirect from the old articles for SEO reasons.

I still have articles on that site that I haven't covered on this site... I think? I'm not really sure. I've written so many articles now that there's no way in heck that I am able to remember them all.

Heck, I've written the same article twice - multiple times. I think there's one article that I wrote a third time.

I have to search before writing articles now.

Also, I reference my own articles fairly regularly. The articles are based on things in my notes and my notes are things of interest to me. So, when I have something I can't quite recall it's just easier to view my site, load up the article, and follow my own directions.

 

[osprey]

The articles are based on things in my notes and my notes are things of interest to me. So, when I have something I can't quite recall it's just easier to view my site, load up the article, and follow my own directions.

This is similar to my own practice ... in my case a directory of files with "notes which are things of interest to me", but not published of course. It's hard to imagine my own functioning in linux without such notes to refer to.

In relation to the lshw command, it has power that outputs info that lscpu doesn't do, but one aspect of lscpu that is informative is the "Vulnerabilities" table:

[flip@flop ~] $ lscpu
<snip>
Vulnerabilities:         
  Itlb multihit:         KVM: Mitigation: VMX disabled
  L1tf:                  Mitigation; PTE Inversion; VMX conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable
  Mds:                   Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
  Meltdown:              Mitigation; PTI
  Mmio stale data:       Mitigation; Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable
  Retbleed:              Mitigation; IBRS
  Spec store bypass:     Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:            Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Spectre v2:            Mitigation; IBRS, IBPB conditional, STIBP conditional, RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS Not affected
  Srbds:                 Mitigation; Microcode
  Tsx async abort:       Not affected

This output lets the user know that Meltdown, Retbleed and Spectre vulnerabilities have mitigations installed in the currently used kernel, and may in new kernels show a mitigation for the currently noted Downfall vulnerability,

 

[KGIII]

and may in new kernels show a mitigation for the currently noted Downfall vulnerability,

I've been expecting this to show up soon, but I haven't seen it yet.

It's hard to imagine my own functioning in linux without such notes to refer to.

Most of my articles come from my notes. Some come from just what I'm currently doing or thinking about, but most are from my notes.

I've kept extensive notes since I started using Linux. The problem is that they're poorly organized and not reasonably searched. I guess I could do some searching with grep and use wildcards or search recursively... That's a kludge, however.

You can actually remove the protection for Meltdown and Spectre. I don't recommend it, but it's possible. Or it was possible. I have it in my notes somewhere. In theory, or so I understand, those protections actually slow your CPU down. So, some folks disable the protection and I guess they just sorta hope for the best.

 

[z7vl7abxc]

This output lets the user know that Meltdown, Retbleed and Spectre vulnerabilities have mitigations installed in the currently used kernel

i had seen that plenty of times, but it wasn't really clicking that the Mitigation column of the output was giving info about the ones provided by the currently used kernel. thank you for for the added context.

the rest of this comment is only tangentially related to the thread at hand because the linked post used the command:

sudo lshw -c CPU

i find it interesting that lshw's -c option can be either upper- or lowercase. in both mx linux 21's (based on debian 11) and linux mint 20.3's man pages it looks like:

-C class
              Alias for -class class.

it's one of the only options i can recall coming across that accepts either case.

 

[xlbooyahlx]

I still have articles on that site that I haven't covered on this site

And those can be used on your current site for the days that you'd just like to take a break!

 

[xlbooyahlx]

This output lets the user know that Meltdown, Retbleed and Spectre vulnerabilities have mitigations installed in the currently used kernel,

Ohhh I like that!!!

 

[xlbooyahlx]

This output lets the user know that Meltdown, Retbleed and Spectre vulnerabilities

Vulnerabilities:         
  Gather data sampling:  Vulnerable: No microcode
  Itlb multihit:         Not affected
  L1tf:                  Not affected
  Mds:                   Not affected
  Meltdown:              Not affected
  Mmio stale data:       Not affected
  Retbleed:              Not affected
  Spec rstack overflow:  Not affected
  Spec store bypass:     Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:            Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer
                          sanitization
  Spectre v2:            Vulnerable: eIBRS with unprivileged eBPF
  Srbds:                 Not affected
  Tsx async abort:       Not affected

I've got a few that still need to be taken care of

 

[KGIII]

And those can be used on your current site for the days that you'd just like to take a break!

Kinda... They all have to be rewritten to fit the current format of the site. So, it's not that much of a break.

Ah well... I don't see me stopping any time soon. I do expect to eventually miss a publication date. It's bound to happen eventually.

 

[xlbooyahlx]

I've got a few that still need to be taken care of

All it took was a bios update to fix one. Still waiting on the other

Vulnerabilities:         
  Gather data sampling:  Mitigation; Microcode
  Itlb multihit:         Not affected
  L1tf:                  Not affected
  Mds:                   Not affected
  Meltdown:              Not affected
  Mmio stale data:       Not affected
  Retbleed:              Not affected
  Spec rstack overflow:  Not affected
  Spec store bypass:     Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:            Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer
                          sanitization
  Spectre v2:            Vulnerable: eIBRS with unprivileged eBPF
  Srbds:                 Not affected
  Tsx async abort:       Not affected

 

[xlbooyahlx]

Vulnerabilities:         
  Itlb multihit:         Not affected
  L1tf:                  Not affected
  Mds:                   Not affected
  Meltdown:              Not affected
  Mmio stale data:       Not affected
  Retbleed:              Not affected
  Spec store bypass:     Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Spectre v1:            Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer
                          sanitization
  Spectre v2:            Mitigation; Enhanced IBRS, IBPB conditional, RSB fillin
                         g, PBRSB-eIBRS SW sequence
  Srbds:                 Not affected
  Tsx async abort:       Not affected

Swapped out kernel to 6.1.0-1019-oem and all is fixed.