Looking for extensible kernel database format

Looking for extensible kernel database format

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

Hey folks,

next week I'd like to address replacing the need for CRDA [0] as a
udev helper with in-kernel functionality  There's a few motivations
for this but a good one is that the kernel already has now
cryptographic support to verify the integrity of the regulatory
database, just as it has support for verifying the integrity of
modules / firmware. We'd use something like:

request_file(file_reqs)

Where the file_reqs provides the requirements, including cryptographic
requirements, and I suspect we'd use LSM to vet for the cryptographic
needs of the file.

Now other than this step CRDA currently *reads* a database and today
we have our own format. If we want to extend this though we will have
to issue a new regdb format and old kernels might not be compatible
with the new format. This is a typical database problem and I'm hoping
we are not the first to deal with this. What *extensible* kernel
database format are there already, are they generic already? I'd
prefer something already using netlink.

Any recommendations?

[0] https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/regulatory/crda

  Luis

Re: Looking for extensible kernel database format

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 5:57 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez
<mcgrof@do-not-panic.com> wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> next week I'd like to address replacing the need for CRDA [0] as a
> udev helper with in-kernel functionality  There's a few motivations
> for this but a good one is that the kernel already has now
> cryptographic support to verify the integrity of the regulatory
> database, just as it has support for verifying the integrity of
> modules / firmware. We'd use something like:
>
> request_file(file_reqs)
>
> Where the file_reqs provides the requirements, including cryptographic
> requirements, and I suspect we'd use LSM to vet for the cryptographic
> needs of the file.
>
> Now other than this step CRDA currently *reads* a database and today
> we have our own format. If we want to extend this though we will have
> to issue a new regdb format and old kernels might not be compatible
> with the new format. This is a typical database problem and I'm hoping
> we are not the first to deal with this. What *extensible* kernel
> database format are there already, are they generic already? I'd
> prefer something already using netlink.
>
> Any recommendations?
>
> [0] https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/regulatory/crda

OK I haven't heard back so will just work towards a very simple
extensible db and proceed as planned to reuse the existing
request_firmware_direct() API but with cryptographic requirements and
vetting through LSM.

 Luis