Re: [PATCH v2] ima: Suspend PCR extends and log appends when rebooting

[Stefan Berger <stefanb@linux.ibm.com>]

On 11/12/24 6:42 PM, Mimi Zohar wrote:
> On Tue, 2024-11-12 at 11:52 -0500, Stefan Berger wrote:
>> To avoid the following types of error messages due to a failure by the TPM
>> driver to use the TPM, suspend TPM PCR extensions and the appending of
>> entries to the IMA log once IMA's reboot notifier has been called. This
>> avoids trying to use the TPM after the TPM subsystem has been shut down.
>>
>> [111707.685315][    T1] ima: Error Communicating to TPM chip, result: -19
>> [111707.685960][    T1] ima: Error Communicating to TPM chip, result: -19
>>
>> This error could be observed on a ppc64 machine running SuSE Linux where
>> processes are still accessing files after devices have been shut down.
>>
>> Suspending the IMA log and PCR extensions shortly before reboot does not
>> seem to open a significant measurement gap since neither TPM quoting would
>> work for attestation nor that new log entries could be written to anywhere
>> after devices have been shut down. However, there's a time window between
>> the invocation of the reboot notifier and the shutdown of devices in
>> kernel_restart_prepare() where __usermodehelper_disable() waits for all
>> running_helpers to exit. During this time window IMA could now miss log
>> entries even though attestation would still work. The reboot of the system
>> shortly after may make this small gap insignificant.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Tushar Sugandhi <tusharsu@linux.microsoft.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Stefan Berger <stefanb@linux.ibm.com>
> 
> Thanks, Stefan.  The patch looks good.  Based on the updated patch description,
> I'm wondering if we should be testing the "system_state" instead of registering
> a reboot notifier?

That's a possibility and would definitely be less code. I don't see why 
not...