linux-kernel - [PATCH v5 10/11] tpm: Add documentation for the tpm

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Date:	Mon,  7 Mar 2016 07:25:13 -0500
From:	Stefan Berger <stefanb@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
To:	tpmdd-devel@...ts.sourceforge.net
Cc:	jarkko.sakkinen@...ux.intel.com, jgunthorpe@...idianresearch.com,
	Stefan Berger <stefanb@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-doc@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-api@...r.kernel.org
Subject: [PATCH v5 10/11] tpm: Add documentation for the tpm_vtpm device driver

Add documentation for the tpm_vtpm device driver that implements
support for providing TPM functionality to Linux containers.

Parts of this documentation were recycled from the Xen vTPM
device driver documentation.

Signed-off-by: Stefan Berger <stefanb@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
CC: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
CC: linux-doc@...r.kernel.org
CC: linux-api@...r.kernel.org
---
 Documentation/tpm/tpm_vtpm.txt | 53 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 53 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/tpm/tpm_vtpm.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/tpm/tpm_vtpm.txt b/Documentation/tpm/tpm_vtpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7746c0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/tpm/tpm_vtpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,53 @@
+Virtual TPM Device Driver for Linux Containers
+
+Authors: Stefan Berger (IBM)
+
+This document describes the virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) device
+driver for Linux containers.
+
+INTRODUCTION
+------------
+
+The goal of this work is to provide TPM functionality to each Linux
+container. This allows programs to interact with a TPM in a container
+the same way they interact with a TPM on the physical system. Each
+container gets its own unique, emulated, software TPM.
+
+
+DESIGN
+------
+
+To make an emulated software TPM available to each container, the container
+management stack needs to create a device pair consisting of a client TPM
+character device /dev/tpmX (with X=0,1,2...) and a 'server side' file
+descriptor. The former is moved into the container by creating a character
+device with the appropriate major and minor numbers while the file descriptor
+is passed to the TPM emulator. Software inside the container can then send
+TPM commands using the character device and the emulator will receive the
+commands via the file descriptor and use it for sending back responses.
+
+To support this, the virtual TPM device driver provides a device /dev/vtpmx
+that is used to create device pairs using an ioctl. The ioctl takes as
+an input flags for configuring the device. The flags  for example indicate
+whether TPM 1.2 or TPM 2 functionality is supported by the TPM emulator.
+The result of the ioctl are the file descriptor for the 'server side'
+as well as the major and minor numbers of the character device that was created.
+Besides that the number of the TPM character device is return. If for
+example /dev/tpm10 was created, the number (dev_num) 10 is returned.
+
+The following is the data structure of the VTPM_NEW_DEV ioctl:
+
+struct vtpm_new_dev {
+	__u32 flags;         /* input */
+	__u32 dev_num;       /* output */
+	__u32 fd;            /* output */
+	__u32 major;         /* output */
+	__u32 minor;         /* output */
+};
+
+Note that if unsupported flags are passed to the device driver, the ioctl will
+fail and errno will be set to ENOSYS. Similarly, if an unsupported ioctl is
+called on the device driver, the ioctl will fail and errno will be set to ENOSYS.
+
+See /usr/include/linux/vtpm.h for definitions related to the public interface
+of this vTPM device driver.
-- 
2.4.3