Firmware Security - Kernel is tainted

Ask Fedora
1

Is there anyway to fix any of this or does any need to be fixed. The first red one is wrong. Secure Boot is 100% enabled. Also pretty sure memory protection in on. The other red ones I have no idea what they are. But the last one about my Kernel being tainted. What does that mean and should I be worried? I am using the kernel that comes with fedora updates.

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2

If you look at the kernel strangely it becomes tainted :slightly_smiling_face:

Now for the true answer, installing any ‘out of tree’ module taints the kernel eg: nvidia, vbox etc.

3

Oh, so I use Nvidia drivers, it taints it? What doe that mean for me? Do I need to be worried? Will this affect me? My nvidia drivers are also from fedora update.

4

There is no need to worry, it’s totally normal.

5

Alright then. Thanks :slight_smile:

6

I don’t think the “platform secure boot” you’re eyeing is the same as the “secure boot” you are thinking. That “platform secure boot” likely means “AMD Platform Secure Boot” which is a part of your platform (motherboard) firmware.

The kernel tainted warning is of interest only if you or anyone needs to investigate kernel issues you’re having (if any). As you have mentioned that you have Nvidia drivers installed, the reason of taint is likely “proprietary module was loaded” and “externally-built (out-of-tree) module was loaded”, it’s to be expected. Like the documentation said, Don’t worry too much about this, most of the time it’s not a problem to run a tainted kernel.

7

As others have mentioned, this is normal when using the proprietary Nvidea drivers. It does, however, mean that kernel developers aren’t able to replicate your configuration when trying to reproduce a bug. If you do encounter a bug you may need to switch to the nouveau driver to see it you can reproduce it without the Nvidia drivers.

You may want to practice switching between Nvidia and nouveau. I think this is documented in the rpmfusion Nvidia “howto”. You should be able to do it with the grub editor for a 1-time boot. As a user who started out on Unix, I tend to work with command-line and emacs, so Nouveau meets most of my needs, and I switch to the proprietary drivers only when I encounter an issue using nouveau.