Re: Should we automatically generate a module signing key at all?

[Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>]

Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org> writes:
> On 05/18/2015 09:20 AM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>> On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 9:04 AM, David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Should we instead provide a script:
>>>
>>>          ./scripts/generate-key
>>>
>>> That generates a key if run and make it so that the build fails if you turn on
>>> module signing and there's no key.
>>
>> That would just be stupid.
>>
>> I'm not ever applying a patch like that. That would absolutely destroy
>> the sane "git clean + rebuild" model.
>>
>> Why the hell would you want to make the sane case that people actually
>> *use* be harder to use.
>>
>> Nobody sane bothers with long-term keys. They are inconvenient and less secure.
>>
>> Put the onus on making it inconvenient on those people who actually
>> have special keys, not on normal people.
>>
>
> I think we should get rid of the idea of automatically generated signing 
> keys entirely.  Instead I think we should generate, at build time, a 
> list of all the module hashes and link that into vmlinux.

Yep, suggested that long ago.  But people want signatures, because
the actual push for pubkeys was never the temp-pubkey model.

Cheers,
Rusty.