Re: [PATCH 3/3] ima: use fs method to read integrity data (updated patch description)

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 8:17 AM, Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Only for direct I/O, and IMA and direct I/O don't work together.
> From ima_collect_measurement:
>
>                 if (file->f_flags & O_DIRECT) {
>                         audit_cause = "failed(directio)";
>                         result = -EACCES;
>                         goto out;
>                 }

That's not the issue.

The issue is that somebody else can come in - using direct IO - at the
same time as the first person is collecting measurements, and thus
race with the collector.

So now the measurements are not trustworthy any more.

> Well, that's exactly the point of the new ->integrity_read routine
> I proposed and prototype.  The important thing is that it is called
> with i_rwsem held because code mugh higher in the chain already
> acquired it, but except for that it's entirely up to the file system.

.. and *my* point is that it's the wrong lock for actually checking
integrity (it doesn't actually guarantee exclusion, even though in
practice it's almost always the case), and so we're adding a nasty
callback that in 99% of all cases is the same as the normal read, and
we *could* have just added it with a RWF flag instead.

Is there some reason why integrity has to use that particular lock
that is so inconvenient for the filesystems it wants to check?

                 Linus