Re: [PATCH] Add linuxefi module

[Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' Serbinenko]

On 22.01.2014 00:29, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 05:29:03PM +0100, Vladimir 'φ-coder/phcoder' 
> Serbinenko wrote:
>> This part is from RH "Secureboot" patch. Few things are right about that
>> patch. Whatever signature verifications would need to be integrated with
>> signatures framework (I have some scratch in phcoder/file_types)
> 
> The RH SB patch is not ideal from a pure GRUB point of view.  But
> realistically, in order to actually be useful in the (unfortunate) SB
> ecosystem that exists today where Microsoft is the effective root of
> trust on most mass-market hardware, we need to have a non-GPLv3
> component that is what the firmware actually loads directly, it needs to
> be able to do signature checking in order to chain to GRUB, and it's
> unlikely to be helpful for the signature checking to be implemented in
> two places - so the scheme where GRUB calls out to shim seems to be an
> uncomfortable necessity there.
> 
Distros start shipping signed kernels with signing in EFI way, including
Ubuntu. Similar proposal to add GnuPG signatures was met with scepticism
(if I remember correctly, including from you). On coreboot systems it
can be interesting to verify that kernel came from Ubuntu and the only
current way to do so is EFI-style signature.
> I have no objection to there being some more native mechanism in GRUB
> that works when users take control of their own trust chain; that seems
> entirely consistent with the FSF's goals regarding UEFI.  But I'm having
> trouble seeing how we could make use of it effectively in order to
> bootstrap free operating systems on firmware that only has the Microsoft
> keys in place, which I think is just as important now as the ability to
> run GNU software on proprietary Unixes was back in the 1980s.
> 
> (Unless, of course, you mean that there ought to be something integrated
> into GRUB's signatures framework that would let it optionally call out
> to shim; that would be an interesting possibility.)
>

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