x86-specific Documentation

• 1. The Linux/x86 Boot Protocol
  • 1.1. Memory Layout
  • 1.2. The Real-Mode Kernel Header
  • 1.3. Details of Header Fields
  • 1.4. The kernel_info
  • 1.5. Details of the kernel_info Fields
  • 1.6. The Image Checksum
  • 1.7. The Kernel Command Line
  • 1.8. Memory Layout of The Real-Mode Code
  • 1.9. Sample Boot Configuartion
  • 1.10. Loading The Rest of The Kernel
  • 1.11. Special Command Line Options
  • 1.12. Running the Kernel
  • 1.13. Advanced Boot Loader Hooks
  • 1.14. 32-bit Boot Protocol
  • 1.15. 64-bit Boot Protocol
  • 1.16. EFI Handover Protocol (deprecated)
• 2. x86 Topology
  • 2.1. Package
  • 2.2. Cores
  • 2.3. Threads
  • 2.4. System topology examples
• 3. Kernel level exception handling
• 4. Kernel Stacks
  • 4.1. Kernel stacks on x86-64 bit
  • 4.2. Printing backtraces on x86
• 5. Kernel Entries
• 6. Early Printk
  • 6.1. Hardware requirements
  • 6.2. Software requirements
  • 6.3. Testing
• 7. ORC unwinder
  • 7.1. Overview
  • 7.2. ORC vs frame pointers
  • 7.3. ORC vs DWARF
  • 7.4. ORC unwind table generation
  • 7.5. Unwinder implementation details
  • 7.6. Etymology
• 8. Zero Page
• 9. The TLB
• 10. MTRR (Memory Type Range Register) control
  • 10.1. Phasing out MTRR use
  • 10.2. Reading MTRRs from the shell
  • 10.3. Creating overlapping MTRRs
  • 10.4. Removing MTRRs from the C-shel
  • 10.5. Reading MTRRs from a C program using ioctl()’s
  • 10.6. Creating MTRRs from a C programme using ioctl()’s
• 11. PAT (Page Attribute Table)
  • 11.1. PAT APIs
  • 11.2. Advanced APIs for drivers
  • 11.3. MTRR effects on PAT / non-PAT systems
  • 11.4. PAT debugging
  • 11.5. PAT Initialization
• 12. Linux IOMMU Support
  • 12.1. Basic stuff
  • 12.2. What is RMRR?
  • 12.3. How is IOVA generated?
  • 12.4. Graphics Problems?
  • 12.5. Some exceptions to IOVA
  • 12.6. Fault reporting
  • 12.7. Boot Message Sample
  • 12.8. PCI-DMA: Using DMAR IOMMU
  • 12.9. TBD
• 13. Intel(R) TXT Overview
  • 13.1. Trusted Boot Project Overview
  • 13.2. Value Proposition for Linux or “Why should you care?”
  • 13.3. How Does it Work?
  • 13.4. Configuring the System
• 14. AMD Memory Encryption
• 15. Page Table Isolation (PTI)
  • 15.1. Overview
  • 15.2. Page Table Management
  • 15.3. Overhead
  • 15.4. Possible Future Work
  • 15.5. Testing
  • 15.6. Debugging
• 16. Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS) mitigation
  • 16.1. Overview
  • 16.2. Exposure assumptions
  • 16.3. Mitigation strategy
  • 16.4. Kernel internal mitigation modes
  • 16.5. Mitigation points
• 17. The Linux Microcode Loader
  • 17.1. Early load microcode
  • 17.2. Late loading
  • 17.3. Builtin microcode
• 18. User Interface for Resource Control feature
  • 18.1. Info directory
  • 18.2. Resource alloc and monitor groups
  • 18.3. Notes on cache occupancy monitoring and control
  • 18.4. Memory bandwidth Allocation and monitoring
  • 18.5. Cache Pseudo-Locking
  • 18.6. Examples for RDT Monitoring along with allocation usage
• 19. TSX Async Abort (TAA) mitigation
  • 19.1. Overview
  • 19.2. Mitigation strategy
  • 19.3. Kernel internal mitigation modes
• 20. USB Legacy support
• 21. i386 Support
  • 21.1. IO-APIC
• 22. x86_64 Support
  • 22.1. AMD64 Specific Boot Options
  • 22.2. General note on [U]EFI x86_64 support
  • 22.3. Memory Management
  • 22.4. 5-level paging
  • 22.5. Fake NUMA For CPUSets
  • 22.6. Firmware support for CPU hotplug under Linux/x86-64
  • 22.7. Configurable sysfs parameters for the x86-64 machine check code