linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v5 5/5] tpm: flush the auth session only when /dev/tpm0 is open

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Message-ID: <f9e2072909d462af72a9f3833b2d76e50894e70a.camel@HansenPartnership.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2024 14:40:28 -0400
From: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>
To: Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko@...nel.org>, linux-integrity@...r.kernel.org
Cc: roberto.sassu@...wei.com, mapengyu@...il.com, stable@...r.kernel.org,
 Mimi Zohar <zohar@...ux.ibm.com>, David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>, Paul
 Moore <paul@...l-moore.com>, James Morris <jmorris@...ei.org>, "Serge E.
 Hallyn" <serge@...lyn.com>, Peter Huewe <peterhuewe@....de>, Jason
 Gunthorpe <jgg@...pe.ca>, keyrings@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org,  linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v5 5/5] tpm: flush the auth session only when /dev/tpm0
 is open

On Tue, 2024-09-24 at 21:07 +0300, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> On Tue Sep 24, 2024 at 4:43 PM EEST, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Sat, 2024-09-21 at 15:08 +0300, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> > > Instead of flushing and reloading the auth session for every
> > > single transaction, keep the session open unless /dev/tpm0 is
> > > used. In practice this means applying TPM2_SA_CONTINUE_SESSION to
> > > the session attributes. Flush the session always when /dev/tpm0
> > > is written.
> > 
> > Patch looks fine but this description is way too terse to explain
> > how it works.
> > 
> > I would suggest:
> > 
> > Boot time elongation as a result of adding sessions has been
> > reported as an issue in
> > https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219229
> > 
> > The root cause is the addition of session overhead to
> > tpm2_pcr_extend().  This overhead can be reduced by not creating
> > and destroying a session for each invocation of the function.  Do
> > this by keeping a session resident in the TPM for reuse by any
> > session based TPM command.  The current flow of TPM commands in the
> > kernel supports this because tpm2_end_session() is only called for
> > tpm errors because most commands don't continue the session and
> > expect the session to be flushed on success.  Thus we can add the
> > continue session flag to session creation to ensure the session
> > won't be flushed except on error, which is a rare case.
> 
> I need to disagree on this as I don't even have PCR extends in my
> boot sequence and it still adds overhead. Have you verified this
> from the reporter?
> 
> There's bunch of things that use auth session, like trusted keys.
> Making such claim that PCR extend is the reason is nonsense.

Well, the bug report does say it's the commit adding sessions to the
PCR extends that causes the delay:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219229#c5

I don't know what else to tell you.

James