Patch series "Support kdump with LUKS encryption by reusing LUKS volume
keys", v9.
LUKS is the standard for Linux disk encryption, widely adopted by users,
and in some cases, such as Confidential VMs, it is a requirement. With
kdump enabled, when the first kernel crashes, the system can boot into the
kdump/crash kernel to dump the memory image (i.e., /proc/vmcore) to a
specified target. However, there are two challenges when dumping vmcore
to a LUKS-encrypted device:
- Kdump kernel may not be able to decrypt the LUKS partition. For some
machines, a system administrator may not have a chance to enter the
password to decrypt the device in kdump initramfs after the 1st kernel
crashes; For cloud confidential VMs, depending on the policy the
kdump kernel may not be able to unseal the keys with TPM and the
console virtual keyboard is untrusted.
- LUKS2 by default use the memory-hard Argon2 key derivation function
which is quite memory-consuming compared to the limited memory reserved
for kdump. Take Fedora example, by default, only 256M is reserved for
systems having memory between 4G-64G. With LUKS enabled, ~1300M needs
to be reserved for kdump. Note if the memory reserved for kdump can't
be used by 1st kernel i.e. an user sees ~1300M memory missing in the
1st kernel.
Besides users (at least for Fedora) usually expect kdump to work out of
the box i.e. no manual password input or custom crashkernel value is
needed. And it doesn't make sense to derivate the keys again in kdump
kernel which seems to be redundant work.
This patchset addresses the above issues by making the LUKS volume keys
persistent for kdump kernel with the help of cryptsetup's new APIs
(--link-vk-to-keyring/--volume-key-keyring). Here is the life cycle of
the kdump copies of LUKS volume keys,
1. After the 1st kernel loads the initramfs during boot, systemd
use an user-input passphrase to de-crypt the LUKS volume keys
or TPM-sealed key and then save the volume keys to specified keyring
(using the --link-vk-to-keyring API) and the key will expire within
specified time.
2. A user space tool (kdump initramfs loader like kdump-utils) create
key items inside /sys/kernel/config/crash_dm_crypt_keys to inform
the 1st kernel which keys are needed.
3. When the kdump initramfs is loaded by the kexec_file_load
syscall, the 1st kernel will iterate created key items, save the
keys to kdump reserved memory.
4. When the 1st kernel crashes and the kdump initramfs is booted, the
kdump initramfs asks the kdump kernel to create a user key using the
key stored in kdump reserved memory by writing yes to
/sys/kernel/crash_dm_crypt_keys/restore. Then the LUKS encrypted
device is unlocked with libcryptsetup's --volume-key-keyring API.
5. The system gets rebooted to the 1st kernel after dumping vmcore to
the LUKS encrypted device is finished
After libcryptsetup saving the LUKS volume keys to specified keyring,
whoever takes this should be responsible for the safety of these copies of
keys. The keys will be saved in the memory area exclusively reserved for
kdump where even the 1st kernel has no direct access. And further more,
two additional protections are added,
- save the copy randomly in kdump reserved memory as suggested by Jan
- clear the _PAGE_PRESENT flag of the page that stores the copy as
suggested by Pingfan
This patchset only supports x86. There will be patches to support other
architectures once this patch set gets merged.
This patch (of 9):
Currently, kexec_buf is placed in order which means for the same machine,
the info in the kexec_buf is always located at the same position each time
the machine is booted. This may cause a risk for sensitive information
like LUKS volume key. Now struct kexec_buf has a new field random which
indicates it's supposed to be placed in a random position.
Note this feature is enabled only when CONFIG_CRASH_DUMP is enabled. So
it only takes effect for kdump and won't impact kexec reboot.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250502011246.99238-1-coxu@redhat.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250502011246.99238-2-coxu@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Coiby Xu <coxu@redhat.com>
Suggested-by: Jan Pazdziora <jpazdziora@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com>
Cc: "Daniel P. Berrange" <berrange@redhat.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Cc: Dave Young <dyoung@redhat.com>
Cc: Liu Pingfan <kernelfans@gmail.com>
Cc: Milan Broz <gmazyland@gmail.com>
Cc: Ondrej Kozina <okozina@redhat.com>
Cc: Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
bf454ec31a