Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2018 17:56:07 +0100 From: Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@rocketmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: Paul Pathiakis <pathiaki2@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Response to Meltdown and Spectre Message-ID: <20180204175607.7f1c70b9@archlinux.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <04967319-e627-9efa-2049-e35f8e1a42ba@yahoo.com> References: <CY1PR01MB12472D916F78A638731ECCE68FFB0@CY1PR01MB1247.prod.exchangelabs.com> <23154.11945.856955.523027@jerusalem.litteratus.org> <5A726B60.7040606@gmail.com> <92120E50-19A7-4A44-90DF-505243D77259@kreme.com> <CA%2BtpaK2o1nbY2W2JVRtogN=P2VM9rag_dodK=GtLWgKwNsYZkg@mail.gmail.com> <F395799E-2C94-47E9-AA1C-5CB075C50076@kreme.com> <044e62f7-69ca-71fe-34a8-5c5cafc06f08@yahoo.com> <slrnp7bpa3.2k8.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de> <0520dd84-c00c-fbf2-da1c-f6ff4c63739d@yahoo.com> <20180203224612.GA10517@milliways.localdomain> <51178.108.68.160.114.1517699531.squirrel@cosmo.uchicago.edu> <slrnp7cmpn.5vo.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de> <04967319-e627-9efa-2049-e35f8e1a42ba@yahoo.com>
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On Sun, 4 Feb 2018 10:36:22 -0500, Paul Pathiakis via freebsd-questions wrote: >On 02/03/2018 20:00, Christian Weisgerber wrote: >> On 2018-02-03, "Valeri Galtsev" <galtsev@kicp.uchicago.edu> wrote: >> =20 >>> 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 =20 >> 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. >> =20 >I would say we are not panicking in any manner. Nor are we in a=20 >frenzy. Real sysadmins are cautious on everything/anything that can=20 >affect the availability of the machines. Any machine that is=20 >'unreliable' is 'bricked' or 'near-bricked' to us. It causes a major=20 >question about availability of the machine. If Intel's patch hadn't=20 >immediately caused issues, it may have caused something that might not=20 >have been caught after it was rolled out to farms (aka 1000s) of=20 >machine. What then? > >There was a similar issue in the UK (I have since forgotten the name >of the data center owner) about 8 (or more) years regarding fujitsu >hard drives. The data center was doing an excellent job of tracking >hard drive replacement every five years. Fujitsu gave a great bid and=20 >shipped the drives..... After less than 6 months, the drives started >to fail. All the drives needed to be replaced after they had just >replaced all the drives a few months previous. The company almost >went under. > >It's that simple in the world of a sysadmins in charge of a large >number of systems. > >Had that patch been rolled out to thousands and failed months >later..... Again, consider the positive side effect. If several computers are rendered useless, we get more bookends and people start to collect and read more books, instead of consuming crap. I'm a 51 years old dyslexic, but you still find more read scientific books in my flat, than in many other flats of my generation, let alone the younger people. While Meltdown and Spectre are a disaster for a lot of server farms, it actually is unimportant for zillions of other computer usages. Meltdown and Spectre are not Fenrir [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenrir], we were much closer to Ragnar=C3=B6k [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6k] when we were affected by Heartbleed, but actually we survived it without much wounds. Don't belive the hype [excepted of the song's title, not really realted :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D9vQaVIoEjOM]. --=20 https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/01/spectre_and_mel_1.html
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