[PATCH v3 0/5] kexec_file: Add buffer hand-over for the next kernel

[Andrew Morton]

On Thu, 25 Aug 2016 15:18:26 -0300 Thiago Jung Bauermann <bauerman at linux.vnet.ibm.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> This patch series implements a mechanism which allows the kernel to pass
> on a buffer to the kernel that will be kexec'd. This buffer is passed
> as a segment which is added to the kimage when it is being prepared
> by kexec_file_load.
> 
> How the second kernel is informed of this buffer is architecture-specific.
> On powerpc, this is done via the device tree, by checking
> the properties /chosen/linux,kexec-handover-buffer-start and
> /chosen/linux,kexec-handover-buffer-end, which is analogous to how the
> kernel finds the initrd.
> 
> This is needed because the Integrity Measurement Architecture subsystem
> needs to preserve its measurement list accross the kexec reboot. The
> following patch series for the IMA subsystem uses this feature for that
> purpose:
> 
> https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/kexec/2016-August/016745.html
> 
> This is so that IMA can implement trusted boot support on the OpenPower
> platform, because on such systems an intermediary Linux instance running
> as part of the firmware is used to boot the target operating system via
> kexec. Using this mechanism, IMA on this intermediary instance can
> hand over to the target OS the measurements of the components that were
> used to boot it.
> 
> Because there could be additional measurement events between the
> kexec_file_load call and the actual reboot, IMA needs a way to update the
> buffer with those additional events before rebooting. One can minimize
> the interval between the kexec_file_load and the reboot syscalls, but as
> small as it can be, there is always the possibility that the measurement
> list will be out of date at the time of reboot.
> 
> To address this issue, this patch series also introduces
> kexec_update_segment, which allows a reboot notifier to change the
> contents of the image segment during the reboot process.
> 
> The last patch is not intended to be merged, it just demonstrates how
> this feature can be used.
> 
> This series applies on top of v6 of the "kexec_file_load implementation
> for PowerPC" patch series (which applies on top of v4.8-rc1):
> 
> https://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/kexec/2016-August/016960.html

I grabbed these two patch series.  I also merged the "IMA:
Demonstration code for kexec buffer passing." demonstration patch just
to get things a bit of testing.  I assume that once the "ima: carry the
measurement list across kexec" series has stabilised, I should drop the
demo patch and also grab those?  If so, pelase start cc'ing me.