linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH 02/12] powerpc: Add support for adding an ESM blob to the zImage wrapper

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Date:   Wed, 22 May 2019 09:15:54 +1000
From:   Paul Mackerras <paulus@...abs.org>
To:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
Cc:     Thiago Jung Bauermann <bauerman@...ux.ibm.com>,
        linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        Alexey Kardashevskiy <aik@...abs.ru>,
        Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.linux@...il.com>,
        Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>,
        Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
        Mike Anderson <andmike@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Ram Pai <linuxram@...ibm.com>,
        Claudio Carvalho <cclaudio@...ux.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 02/12] powerpc: Add support for adding an ESM blob to
 the zImage wrapper

On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 07:13:26AM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 01:49:02AM -0300, Thiago Jung Bauermann wrote:
> > From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@...nel.crashing.org>
> > 
> > For secure VMs, the signing tool will create a ticket called the "ESM blob"
> > for the Enter Secure Mode ultravisor call with the signatures of the kernel
> > and initrd among other things.
> > 
> > This adds support to the wrapper script for adding that blob via the "-e"
> > option to the zImage.pseries.
> > 
> > It also adds code to the zImage wrapper itself to retrieve and if necessary
> > relocate the blob, and pass its address to Linux via the device-tree, to be
> > later consumed by prom_init.
> 
> Where does the "BLOB" come from?  How is it licensed and how can we
> satisfy the GPL with it?

The blob is data, not code, and it will be created by a tool that will
be open source.  My understanding is that most of it will be encrypted
with a session key that is encrypted with the secret key of the
ultravisor.  Ram Pai's KVM Forum talk last year explained how this
works.

Paul.