Re: [PATCH 5.15 0/6] arm64: kexec_file: use more system keyrings to verify kernel image signature + dependencies

From: "Michal Suchánek" <msuchanek@suse.de>
To: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org,
	Heiko Carstens <hca@linux.ibm.com>,
	Vasily Gorbik <gor@linux.ibm.com>,
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	Alexander Egorenkov <egorenar@linux.ibm.com>,
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	Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>,
	Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
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	Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
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	Coiby Xu <coxu@redhat.com>,
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	James Morse <james.morse@arm.com>,
	AKASHI Takahiro <takahiro.akashi@linaro.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 5.15 0/6] arm64: kexec_file: use more system keyrings to verify kernel image signature + dependencies
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2022 13:55:23 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20220924115523.GZ28810@kitsune.suse.cz> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Yy7YTnJKkv1UtvWF@kroah.com>

On Sat, Sep 24, 2022 at 12:13:34PM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 24, 2022 at 11:45:21AM +0200, Michal Suchánek wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 24, 2022 at 11:19:19AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 23, 2022 at 07:10:28PM +0200, Michal Suchanek wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > > 
> > > > this is backport of commit 0d519cadf751
> > > > ("arm64: kexec_file: use more system keyrings to verify kernel image signature")
> > > > to table 5.15 tree including the preparatory patches.
> > > 
> > > This feels to me like a new feature for arm64, one that has never worked
> > > before and you are just making it feature-parity with x86, right?
> > > 
> > > Or is this a regression fix somewhere?  Why is this needed in 5.15.y and
> > > why can't people who need this new feature just use a newer kernel
> > > version (5.19?)
> > 
> > It's half-broken implementation of the kexec kernel verification. At the time
> > it was implemented for arm64 we had the platform and secondary keyrings
> > and x86 was using them but on arm64 the initial implementation ignores
> > them.
> 
> Ok, so it's something that never worked.  Adding support to get it to
> work doesn't really fall into the stable kernel rules, right?

Not sure. It was defective, not using the facilities available at the
time correctly. Which translates to kernels that can be kexec'd on x86
failing to kexec on arm64 without any explanation (signed with same key,
built for the appropriate arch).

> Again, what's wrong with 5.19 for anyone who wants this?  Who does want
> this?

Not sure, really.

The final patch was repeatedly backported to stable and failed to build
because the prerequisites were missing.

So this is a backport that includes the prerequisites for it to build.

If nobody wanted this why is it repeatedly backported generating the
failure messages?

Thanks

Michal

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