[Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Kernel tinification: shrinking the kernel and avoiding size regressions

[Josh Boyer]

On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 5:27 PM, James Bottomley
<James.Bottomley at hansenpartnership.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-05-02 at 17:19 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 5:01 PM, Dave Jones <davej at redhat.com> wrote:
>> > On Fri, May 02, 2014 at 04:41:41PM -0400, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
>> >
>> >  > And I think we can also further break this down into the classes of
>> >  > code which require root privs (i.e., like kexec), and those which can
>> >  > be used by any userid.
>> >
>> > In the brave new world of secure boot, we kind of have to care about
>> > even the root cases now too [*], but I agree in the general case.
>>
>> Speaking of that... is it worth my time to propose a "What to do about
>> the secure_modules/trusted_kernel/whatever patch set that distros are
>> carrying to support Secure Boot?  I thought we had agreement and a
>> path forward at LPC last year, but things seem to have gotten derailed
>> again.
>
> Would you believe we're just discussing with the distros how we might
> re-engineer the Linux secure boot process.  Unfortunately the details

I would believe it.

> depend on a UEFI forum proposal that are UEFI confidential at this time,
> but you can probably pick them up from Peter Jones, since you're a Red
> Hat employee.  One of the side effects of this, if it happens, will be

OK.

> to separate Linux secure boot policy from Microsoft's binary signing
> requirements which might take some of the heat out of the arguments
> about which parts of the patch are to please microsoft and refocus the
> debate towards how we make better use of secure boot.  I'll try and
> ensure that either the proposals are public by KS or that we have
> permission to share the details.

The objectionable parts having to do with signing aren't even in the
patchset Matthew has posted.  That's the initial set he tried to get
pulled in and failed.  If the proposal drastically changes that
approach I'd be surprised (maybe pleasantly).

josh