Re: [PATCH v5 11/13] ima: Support staging and deleting N measurements entries

[steven chen <chenste@linux.microsoft.com>]

On 5/26/2026 4:08 AM, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> On Wed, 2026-04-29 at 18:03 +0200, Roberto Sassu wrote:
>> From: Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu@huawei.com>
>>
>> Add support for sending a value N between 1 and ULONG_MAX to the IMA
>> original measurement interface. This value represents the number of
>> measurements that should be deleted from the current measurements list. In
>> this case, measurements are staged in an internal non-user visible list,
>> and immediately deleted.
>>
>> This staging method allows the remote attestation agents to easily separate
>> the measurements that were verified (staged and deleted) from those that
>> weren't due to the race between taking a TPM quote and reading the
>> measurements list.
> The reason for removing records from the IMA measurement list is to free kernel
> memory.  However, the level of precision in removing only those measurements
> needed for the quote seems necessary only if the measurement records are not
> being saved.  Upstreaming a feature to remove measurement records from the IMA
> measurement list is to address the kernel memory issue — clearly not to drop
> measurement records and break attestation.
>
>> In order to minimize the locking time of ima_extend_list_mutex, deleting
>> N entries is realized by doing a lockless walk in the current measurements
>> list to determine the N-th entry to cut, to cut the current measurements
>> list under the lock, and by deleting the excess entries after releasing the
>> lock.
>>
>> Flushing the hash table is not supported for N entries, since it would
>> require removing the N entries one by one from the hash table under the
>> ima_extend_list_mutex lock, which would increase the locking time.
>>
>> The ima_extend_list_mutex lock is necessary in ima_dump_measurement_list()
>> because ima_queue_delete_partial() uses __list_cut_position() to modify
>> ima_measurements, for which no RCU-safe variant exists. For the staging
>> with prompt flavor alone, list_replace_rcu() could have been used instead,
>> but since both flavors share the same kexec serialization path, the mutex
>> is required regardless.
> Thank you for the clear explanation for the changes and limitations required to
> support this feature.
>
> The changes needed for supporting "stage and delete N" measurement records
> should be limited to this patch.  Patch 9/13 should have used
> list_replace_rcu(), without the mutex_lock.
>
>> Link: https://github.com/linux-integrity/linux/issues/1
>> Suggested-by: Steven Chen <chenste@linux.microsoft.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu@huawei.com>
> Otherwise,
>
> Reviewed-by: Mimi Zohar <zohar@linux.ibm.com>

Tested-by: Steven Chen <chenste@linux.microsoft.com>
Reviewed-by: Steven Chen <chenste@linux.microsoft.com>