Re: QAPI schema for desired state of LUKS keyslots

["Daniel P. Berrangé" <berrange@redhat.com>]

On Mon, Feb 17, 2020 at 01:28:51PM +0100, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> Kevin Wolf <kwolf@redhat.com> writes:
> 
> > Am 15.02.2020 um 15:51 hat Markus Armbruster geschrieben:
> >> Review of this patch led to a lengthy QAPI schema design discussion.
> >> Let me try to condense it into a concrete proposal.
> >> 
> >> This is about the QAPI schema, and therefore about QMP.  The
> >> human-friendly interface is out of scope.  Not because it's not
> >> important (it clearly is!), only because we need to *focus* to have a
> >> chance at success.
> >> 
> >> I'm going to include a few design options.  I'll mark them "Option:".
> >> 
> >> The proposed "amend" interface takes a specification of desired state,
> >> and figures out how to get from here to there by itself.  LUKS keyslots
> >> are one part of desired state.
> >> 
> >> We commonly have eight LUKS keyslots.  Each keyslot is either active or
> >> inactive.  An active keyslot holds a secret.
> >> 
> >> Goal: a QAPI type for specifying desired state of LUKS keyslots.
> >> 
> >> Proposal:
> >> 
> >>     { 'enum': 'LUKSKeyslotState',
> >>       'data': [ 'active', 'inactive' ] }
> >> 
> >>     { 'struct': 'LUKSKeyslotActive',
> >>       'data': { 'secret': 'str',
> >>                 '*iter-time': 'int } }
> >> 
> >>     { 'struct': 'LUKSKeyslotInactive',
> >>       'data': { '*old-secret': 'str' } }
> >> 
> >>     { 'union': 'LUKSKeyslotAmend',
> >>       'base': { '*keyslot': 'int',
> >>                 'state': 'LUKSKeyslotState' }
> >>       'discriminator': 'state',
> >>       'data': { 'active': 'LUKSKeyslotActive',
> >>                 'inactive': 'LUKSKeyslotInactive' } }
> >> 
> >> LUKSKeyslotAmend specifies desired state for a set of keyslots.
> >
> > Though not arbitrary sets of keyslots, it's only a single keyslot or
> > multiple keyslots containing the same secret. Might be good enough in
> > practice, though it means that you may have to issue multiple amend
> > commands to get to the final state that you really want (even if doing
> > everything at once would be safe).
> 
> True.  I traded expressiveness for simplicity.
> 
> Here's the only practical case I can think of where the lack of
> expressiveness may hurt: replace secrets.
> 
> With this interface, you need two operations: activate a free slot with
> the new secret, deactivate the slot(s) with the old secret.  There is an
> intermediate state with both secrets active.
> 
> A more expressive interface could let you do both in one step.  Relevant
> only if the implementation actually provides atomicity.  Can it?

This restriction is already present in the the long standing
cryptsetup command, so I don't think it is a big deal. Or to
put it another way I don't see a compelling justification for
why QEMU needs to be special and do it in op.


Regards,
Daniel
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