lists.openwall.net   lists  /  announce  owl-users  owl-dev  john-users  john-dev  passwdqc-users  yescrypt  popa3d-users  /  oss-security  kernel-hardening  musl  sabotage  tlsify  passwords  /  crypt-dev  xvendor  /  Bugtraq  Full-Disclosure  linux-kernel  linux-netdev  linux-ext4  linux-hardening  linux-cve-announce  PHC 
Open Source and information security mailing list archives
 
Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.
[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <CALrw=nH-vcROja2W23rUKEEZMZhxsQiNB4P_ZZQ-XhPHAJGxrg@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Tue, 21 Nov 2023 09:43:45 +0000
From:   Ignat Korchagin <ignat@...udflare.com>
To:     Baoquan He <bhe@...hat.com>, eric_devolder@...oo.com
Cc:     linux@...linux.org.uk, catalin.marinas@....com, will@...nel.org,
        chenhuacai@...nel.org, geert@...ux-m68k.org,
        tsbogend@...ha.franken.de,
        James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senpartnership.com>,
        deller@....de, ysato@...rs.sourceforge.jp, dalias@...c.org,
        glaubitz@...sik.fu-berlin.de, Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com, x86@...nel.org,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-ia64@...r.kernel.org,
        loongarch@...ts.linux.dev, linux-m68k@...ts.linux-m68k.org,
        linux-mips@...r.kernel.org, linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org,
        linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org, linux-riscv@...ts.infradead.org,
        linux-s390@...r.kernel.org, linux-sh@...r.kernel.org,
        kernel@...0n.name, mpe@...erman.id.au, npiggin@...il.com,
        christophe.leroy@...roup.eu, paul.walmsley@...ive.com,
        palmer@...belt.com, aou@...s.berkeley.edu, hca@...ux.ibm.com,
        gor@...ux.ibm.com, agordeev@...ux.ibm.com,
        borntraeger@...ux.ibm.com, svens@...ux.ibm.com, hpa@...or.com,
        keescook@...omium.org, paulmck@...nel.org,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>, frederic@...nel.org,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@...nel.org>, samitolvanen@...gle.com,
        juerg.haefliger@...onical.com, arnd@...db.de,
        rmk+kernel@...linux.org.uk, linus.walleij@...aro.org,
        sebastian.reichel@...labora.com, rppt@...nel.org,
        kirill.shutemov@...ux.intel.com, anshuman.khandual@....com,
        ziy@...dia.com, masahiroy@...nel.org, ndesaulniers@...gle.com,
        mhiramat@...nel.org, ojeda@...nel.org, thunder.leizhen@...wei.com,
        xin3.li@...el.com, tj@...nel.org,
        Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>, tsi@...oix.net,
        hbathini@...ux.ibm.com, sourabhjain@...ux.ibm.com,
        boris.ostrovsky@...cle.com, konrad.wilk@...cle.com,
        kernel-team <kernel-team@...udflare.com>
Subject: Re: Potential config regression after 89cde455 ("kexec: consolidate
 kexec and crash options into kernel/Kconfig.kexec")

On Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 7:53 AM Ignat Korchagin <ignat@...udflare.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2023 at 1:50 AM Baoquan He <bhe@...hat.com> wrote:
> >
> > Eric DeVolder's Oracle mail address is not available anymore, add his
> > current mail address he told me.
>
> Thank you!
>
> > On 11/20/23 at 10:52pm, Ignat Korchagin wrote:
> > > Good day!
> > >
> > > We have recently started to evaluate Linux 6.6 and noticed that we
> > > cannot disable CONFIG_KEXEC anymore, but keep CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP
> > > enabled. It seems to be related to commit 89cde455 ("kexec:
> > > consolidate kexec and crash options into kernel/Kconfig.kexec"), where
> > > a CONFIG_KEXEC dependency was added to CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP.
> > >
> > > In our current kernel (Linux 6.1) we only enable CONFIG_KEXEC_FILE
> > > with enforced signature check to support the kernel crash dumping
> > > functionality and would like to keep CONFIG_KEXEC disabled for
> > > security reasons [1].
> > >
> > > I was reading the long commit message, but the reason for adding
> > > CONFIG_KEXEC as a dependency for CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP evaded me. And I
> > > believe from the implementation perspective CONFIG_KEXEC_FILE should
> > > suffice here (as we successfully used it for crashdumps on Linux 6.1).
> > >
> > > Is there a reason for adding this dependency or is it just an
> > > oversight? Would some solution of requiring either CONFIG_KEXEC or
> > > CONFIG_KEXEC_FILE work here?
> >
> > I searched the patch history, found Eric didn't add the dependency on
> > CONFIG_KEXEC at the beginning. Later a linux-next building failure with
> > randconfig was reported, in there CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP enabled, while
> > CONFIG_KEXEC is disabled. Finally Eric added the KEXEC dependency for
> > CRASH_DUMP. Please see below link for more details:
> >
> > https://lore.kernel.org/all/3e8eecd1-a277-2cfb-690e-5de2eb7b988e@oracle.com/T/#u
>
> Thank you for digging this up. However I'm still confused, because
> this is exactly how we configure Linux 6.1 (although we do have
> CONFIG_KEXEC_FILE enabled) and we don't have any problems. I believe
> we did not investigate this issue properly.

I did some preliminary investigation for this. If I patch out the
dependency on CONFIG_KEXEC the kernel builds just fine for x86
(without CONFIG_CRASH_HOTPLUG - which is probably another issue) - so
this was the previous behaviour. I can see that the reported error is
for arm architecture and was able to reproduce it with a simple cross
compiler in Debian. However, I think it is still somehow related to
this patchset as the previous kernels (up to 6.5) build fine with just
CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP and without CONFIG_KEXEC for arm as well. So even
for arm it was introduced in 6.6.

> > And besides, the newly added CONFIG_CRASH_HOTPLUG also needs
> > CONFIG_KEXEC if the elfcorehdr is allowed to be manipulated when
> > cpu/memory hotplug hapened.
>
> This still feels like a regression to me: any crash dump support
> should be independent of KEXEC syscalls being present. While probably
> the common case (including us) that the crashing kernel and recovery
> kernel are the same, they don't have to be. We need kexec syscall in
> the crashing kernel, but crashdump support in the recovery kernel (but
> the recovery kernel not having the kexec syscalls should be totally
> fine). If we do require some code definitions from kexec - at most we
> should put them under CONFIG_KEXEC_CORE.
>
> > Thanks
> > Baoquan
> >

Ignat

Powered by blists - more mailing lists

Powered by Openwall GNU/*/Linux Powered by OpenVZ