Re: [PATCH 5/5] efi: Make efivarfs entries immutable by default. (v5)

[Matt Fleming <matt-mF/unelCI9GS6iBeEJttW/XRex20P6io@public.gmane.org>]

On Fri, 12 Feb, at 10:09:49AM, Peter Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 02:36:28PM +0100, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
> > On 02/04/16 16:34, Peter Jones wrote:
> > > "rm -rf" is bricking some peoples' laptops because of variables being
> > > used to store non-reinitializable firmware driver data that's required
> > > to POST the hardware.
> > > 
> > > These are 100% bugs, and they need to be fixed, but in the mean time it
> > > shouldn't be easy to *accidentally* brick machines.
> > > 
> > > We have to have delete working, and picking which variables do and don't
> > > work for deletion is quite intractable, so instead make everything
> > > immutable by default (except for a whitelist), and make tools that
> > > aren't quite so broad-spectrum unset the immutable flag.
> > 
> > I think that the whitelist should include the following pattern
> > (permitting deletion):
> > - GUID:                  LINUX_EFI_CRASH_GUID
> > - variable name pattern: "dump-type*"
> > 
> > This is because the pstore filesystem can be backed by UEFI variables,
> > and (for example) a crash might dump the last kilobytes of the dmesg
> > into a number of pstore entries, each entry backed by a separate UEFI
> > variable in the above GUID namespace, and with a variable name according
> > to the above pattern.
> > 
> > Please see "drivers/firmware/efi/efi-pstore.c".
> > 
> > While this patch series will not prevent the user from deleting those
> > UEFI variables via the pstore filesystem (i.e., deleting a pstore fs
> > entry will continue to delete the backing UEFI variable), I think it
> > would be nice to preserve the possibility for the sysadmin to delete
> > Linux-created UEFI variables that carry portions of the crash log,
> > *without* having to mount the pstore filesystem.
> 
> They still have that ability with this patch - they have to chattr -i it
> manually, or use libefivar's efi_del_variable() with a suitably new
> libefivar, but we aren't ever actually stopping deletion.
> 
> Which doesn't mean you're wrong, mind you, but it does remove urgency.

Well, we should avoid having different whitelists in different kernel
versions, so I think there is some urgency in fixing the efi-pstore
case now.

Remember, we're breaking userspace ABI with these changes, which is a
major downside that is only offset by the risk of bricking the
machine. There's no chance of bricking by deleting the efi-pstore
variables, so we'd be breaking userspace ABI for no reason.

Would something like this allow efi-pstore variables to be deleted
(and anything else that uses LINUX_EFI_CRASH_GUID in future)?

---

diff --git a/drivers/firmware/efi/vars.c b/drivers/firmware/efi/vars.c
index 50f10bad2604..7f2ea21c730d 100644
--- a/drivers/firmware/efi/vars.c
+++ b/drivers/firmware/efi/vars.c
@@ -198,6 +198,7 @@ static const struct variable_validate variable_validate[] = {
 	{ EFI_GLOBAL_VARIABLE_GUID, "OsIndications", NULL },
 	{ EFI_GLOBAL_VARIABLE_GUID, "PlatformLang", validate_ascii_string },
 	{ EFI_GLOBAL_VARIABLE_GUID, "Timeout", validate_uint16 },
+	{ LINUX_EFI_CRASH_GUID, "*", NULL },
 	{ NULL_GUID, "", NULL },
 };