linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] nfsd: Use MD5 library instead of crypto

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Message-ID: <c5b9cc7300f88e4f6fbd3f0c07dd5dfa4cbaf38e.camel@kernel.org>
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2025 14:49:40 -0400
From: Jeff Layton <jlayton@...nel.org>
To: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@...nel.org>
Cc: linux-nfs@...r.kernel.org, Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@...cle.com>,
 NeilBrown	 <neil@...wn.name>, Olga Kornievskaia <okorniev@...hat.com>, Dai
 Ngo	 <Dai.Ngo@...cle.com>, Tom Talpey <tom@...pey.com>,
 linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org, 	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] nfsd: Use MD5 library instead of crypto_shash

On Sun, 2025-10-12 at 10:00 -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2025 at 07:12:26AM -0400, Jeff Layton wrote:
> > On Sat, 2025-10-11 at 11:52 -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> > > Update NFSD's support for "legacy client tracking" (which uses MD5) to
> > > use the MD5 library instead of crypto_shash.  This has several benefits:
> > > 
> > > - Simpler code.  Notably, much of the error-handling code is no longer
> > >   needed, since the library functions can't fail.
> > > 
> > > - Improved performance due to reduced overhead.  A microbenchmark of
> > >   nfs4_make_rec_clidname() shows a speedup from 1455 cycles to 425.
> > > 
> > > - The MD5 code can now safely be built as a loadable module when nfsd is
> > >   built as a loadable module.  (Previously, nfsd forced the MD5 code to
> > >   built-in, presumably to work around the unreliablity of the name-based
> > >   loading.)  Thus, select MD5 from the tristate option NFSD if
> > >   NFSD_LEGACY_CLIENT_TRACKING, instead of from the bool option NFSD_V4.
> > > 
> > > To preserve the existing behavior of legacy client tracking support
> > > being disabled when the kernel is booted with "fips=1", make
> > > nfsd4_legacy_tracking_init() return an error if fips_enabled.  I don't
> > > know if this is truly needed, but it preserves the existing behavior.
> > > 
> > 
> > FIPS is pretty draconian about algorithms, AIUI. We're not using MD5 in
> > a cryptographically significant way here, but the FIPS gods won't bless
> > a kernel that uses MD5 at all, so I think it is needed.
> 
> If it's not being used for a security purpose, then I think you can just
> drop the fips_enabled check.  People are used to the old API where MD5
> was always forbidden when fips_enabled, but it doesn't actually need to
> be that strict.  For this patch I wasn't certain about the use case
> though, so I just opted to preserve the existing behavior for now.  A
> follow-on patch to remove the check could make sense.
> 

This is all legacy code anyway. We just recently flipped the default
for CONFIG_NFSD_LEGACY_CLIENT_TRACKING to 'n', so I'm hoping that in a
year or so we should be able to just remove it altogether.

-- 
Jeff Layton <jlayton@...nel.org>