Re: [PATCH v7 0/5] Allow guest access to EFI confidential computing secret area

From: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To: James Bottomley <jejb@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Dov Murik <dovmurik@linux.ibm.com>,
	linux-efi@vger.kernel.org, Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>,
	Ashish Kalra <ashish.kalra@amd.com>,
	Brijesh Singh <brijesh.singh@amd.com>,
	Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@amd.com>,
	Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>,
	James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>,
	"Serge E. Hallyn" <serge@hallyn.com>,
	Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>, Andrew Scull <ascull@google.com>,
	Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>,
	"Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@redhat.com>,
	Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@redhat.com>,
	Lenny Szubowicz <lszubowi@redhat.com>,
	Peter Gonda <pgonda@google.com>,
	Tobin Feldman-Fitzthum <tobin@linux.ibm.com>,
	Jim Cadden <jcadden@ibm.com>,
	Daniele Buono <dbuono@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	linux-coco@lists.linux.dev,
	linux-security-module@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Nayna Jain <nayna@linux.ibm.com>,
	dougmill@linux.vnet.ibm.com, gcwilson@linux.ibm.com,
	gjoyce@ibm.com, linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org,
	mjg59@srcf.ucam.org, mpe@ellerman.id.au, dja@axtens.net
Subject: Re: [PATCH v7 0/5] Allow guest access to EFI confidential computing secret area
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2022 15:41:20 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YflGkNwyI6LUSVVk@kroah.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <37779659ca96ac9c1f11bcc0ac0665895c795b54.camel@linux.ibm.com>

On Tue, Feb 01, 2022 at 09:24:50AM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> [cc's added]
> On Tue, 2022-02-01 at 14:50 +0100, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 01, 2022 at 12:44:08PM +0000, Dov Murik wrote:
> [...]
> > > # ls -la /sys/kernel/security/coco/efi_secret
> > > total 0
> > > drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Jun 28 11:55 .
> > > drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 ..
> > > -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 736870e5-84f0-4973-92ec-
> > > 06879ce3da0b
> > > -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 83c83f7f-1356-4975-8b7e-
> > > d3a0b54312c6
> > > -r--r----- 1 root root 0 Jun 28 11:54 9553f55d-3da2-43ee-ab5d-
> > > ff17f78864d2
> > 
> > Please see my comments on the powerpc version of this type of thing:
> > 	
> > https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220122005637.28199-1-nayna@linux.ibm.com
> 
> If you want a debate, actually cc'ing the people on the other thread
> would have been a good start ...
> 
> For those added, this patch series is at:
> 
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220201124413.1093099-1-dovmurik@linux.ibm.com/

Thanks for adding everyone.

> > You all need to work together to come up with a unified place for
> > this and stop making it platform-specific.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure of that.  If you look at the differences between
> EFI variables and the COCO proposal: the former has an update API
> which, in the case of signed variables, is rather complex and a UC16
> content requirement.  The latter is binary data with read only/delete. 
> Plus each variable in EFI is described by a GUID, so having a directory
> of random guids, some of which behave like COCO secrets and some of
> which are EFI variables is going to be incredibly confusing (and also
> break all our current listing tools which seems somewhat undesirable).
> 
> So we could end up with 
> 
> <common path prefix>/efivar
> <common path prefix>/coco

The powerpc stuff is not efi.  But yes, that is messy here.  But why
doesn't the powerpc follow the coco standard?

> To achieve the separation, but I really don't see what this buys us. 
> Both filesystems would likely end up with different backends because of
> the semantic differences and we can easily start now in different
> places (effectively we've already done this for efi variables) and
> unify later if that is the chosen direction, so it doesn't look like a
> blocker.
> 
> > Until then, we can't take this.
> 
> I don't believe anyone was asking you to take it.

I was on the review list...