[RFC 0/3] extend kexec_file_load system call

[Dave Young]

On 07/14/16 at 02:38am, AKASHI Takahiro wrote:
> Apologies for the slow response. I'm attending LinuxCon this week.
> 
> On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 10:34:47AM +0100, Mark Rutland wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 13, 2016 at 10:36:14AM +0800, Dave Young wrote:
> > > But consider we can kexec to a different kernel and a different initrd so there
> > > will be use cases to pass a total different dtb as well.
> > 
> > It depends on what you mean by "a different kernel", and what this
> > implies for the DTB.
> > 
> > I expect future arm64 Linux kernels to function with today's DTBs, and
> > the existing boot protocol. The kexec_file_load syscall already has
> > enough information for the kernel to inject the initrd and bootargs
> > properties into a DTB.
> > 
> > In practice on x86 today, kexec_file_load only supports booting to a
> > Linux kernel, because the in-kernel purgatory only implements the x86
> > Linux boot protocol. Analagously, for arm64 I think that the first
> > kernel should use its internal copy of the boot DTB, with /chosen fixed
> > up appropriately, assuming the next kernel is an arm64 Linux image.
> > 
> > If booting another OS, the only parts of the DTB I would expect to
> > change are the properties under chosen, as everything else *should* be
> > OS-independent. However the other OS may have a completely different
> > boot protocol, might not even take a DTB, and will likely need a
> > compeltely different purgatory implementation. So just allowing the DTB
> > to be altered isn't sufficient for that case.
> > 
> > There might be cases where we want a different DTB, but as far as I can
> > tell we have nothing analagous on x86 today. If we do need this, we
> > should have an idea of what real case(s) were trying to solve.
> 
> What I had in my mind was:
> 
> - Kdump
>   As Russel said, we definitely need to modify dtb.
>   In addition to bootargs and initrd proerties (FYI, in my arm64
>   implementation for arm64, eflcorehdr info is also passed as DT
>   property), we may want to remove unnecessary devices and
>   even add a dedicated storage device for storing a core dump image.
> - Say, booting BE kernel on ACPI LE kernel
>   In this case, there is no useful dtb in the kernel.
> 
> Have said that, as Mark said, we may be able to use normal kexec_load
> system call if we don't need a "secure" kexec.
> 
> BTW, why doesn't the current kexec_load have ability of verifying
> a signature of initramfs image? Is IMA/EVM expected to be used
> at runtime?

I believe there are some limitations for verify signatures in kexec_load.
First kexec-tools need to be trusted, but there's no way to sign and
verify signature of shared libraries. There maybe other limitations I
can not remember which are also reasons why Vivek moved to current
file based syscall.

Thanks
Dave