[0/4] efi: verify that variable services are supported

This series adds a sanity check to make sure that the variable services
are actually available before registering the generic efivar ops.

This is used to address some potential races with custom efivars
implementation such as the Google SMI or upcoming Qualcomm SCM ones.

Specifically, efivarfs currently requires that the efivar ops have been
registered before module init time even though the Google driver can be
built as a module. Instead, the driver has so far relied on the fact
that the generic ops have been registered by efi core only to later be
overridden by the custom implementation (or Google doesn't use
efivarfs).

Instead, let's move the efivars sanity check to mount time to allow for
late registration of efivars.

Note that requiring that all efivars implementation to always be
built-in and registered before module init time could be an alternative,
but we'd still need to make sure that the custom implementation is then
not overridden by the default (broken) one. To avoid such init call
games, allowing late registration seems preferable.

This would however require any drivers that use efivars to probe defer
until it becomes available, which is also unfortunate, but possibly
still better than having generic kernels carry multiple built-in efivars
implementations.

Note that there are currently no such (efivars consumer) drivers in-tree
except for the efivars_pstore driver, which currently do rely on
efivarfs being available at module init time (and hence may fail to
initialise with the custom efivar implementations).

Johan


Johan Hovold (4):
  efi: efivars: add efivars printk prefix
  efivarfs: always register filesystem
  efi: verify that variable services are supported
  efi: efivars: prevent double registration

 drivers/firmware/efi/efi.c  | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/firmware/efi/vars.c | 17 ++++++++++++++---
 fs/efivarfs/super.c         |  6 +++---
 3 files changed, 39 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

On Thu, 19 Jan 2023 at 17:45, Johan Hovold <johan+linaro@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> This series adds a sanity check to make sure that the variable services
> are actually available before registering the generic efivar ops.
>
> This is used to address some potential races with custom efivars
> implementation such as the Google SMI or upcoming Qualcomm SCM ones.
>
> Specifically, efivarfs currently requires that the efivar ops have been
> registered before module init time even though the Google driver can be
> built as a module. Instead, the driver has so far relied on the fact
> that the generic ops have been registered by efi core only to later be
> overridden by the custom implementation (or Google doesn't use
> efivarfs).
>
> Instead, let's move the efivars sanity check to mount time to allow for
> late registration of efivars.
>
> Note that requiring that all efivars implementation to always be
> built-in and registered before module init time could be an alternative,
> but we'd still need to make sure that the custom implementation is then
> not overridden by the default (broken) one. To avoid such init call
> games, allowing late registration seems preferable.
>
> This would however require any drivers that use efivars to probe defer
> until it becomes available, which is also unfortunate, but possibly
> still better than having generic kernels carry multiple built-in efivars
> implementations.
>
> Note that there are currently no such (efivars consumer) drivers in-tree
> except for the efivars_pstore driver, which currently do rely on
> efivarfs being available at module init time (and hence may fail to
> initialise with the custom efivar implementations).
>
> Johan
>
>
> Johan Hovold (4):
>   efi: efivars: add efivars printk prefix
>   efivarfs: always register filesystem
>   efi: verify that variable services are supported
>   efi: efivars: prevent double registration
>

Queued up in efi/next - thanks.

>  drivers/firmware/efi/efi.c  | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++++
>  drivers/firmware/efi/vars.c | 17 ++++++++++++++---
>  fs/efivarfs/super.c         |  6 +++---
>  3 files changed, 39 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
>
> --
> 2.38.2
>