Re: Is Debian Linux protected against the Meltdown and Spectre security flaws?

[Michael Fothergill <michael.fothergill@gmail.com>]

On 19 February 2018 at 17:03, Reco <recoverym4n@gmail.com> wrote:

        Hi.

On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 04:40:19PM +0000, Michael Fothergill wrote:
> I had thought up to now that e.g. kernel 4.15.4-1 was new enough that if
> you compiled it with gcc 7.3 then the spectre fix would then work.

Not unless you apply the retpoline patch to the gcc.

For instance, just today said patch was applied to the Debian stable
version of gcc, gcc-4.9:

https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4117

Reco

​Doesn't that mean that if you installed this version of gcc 4.9 and one of the most recent kernels debian has e.g. 4.15.4-1 above

then it will be able to correct install the microcode or whatever it is called and you don't need a compiler as new as gcc 7.3?

If so that is excellent news indeed.

No chrooting needed there......

Not a sausage of it.

You would have to run the compiler but the kernel source for 4.15.4-1 would already be in the debian format.

So it should not be that difficult.

Regards

MF

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