Re: [PATCH v2 00/14] Introduce support for Dell SMBIOS over WMI

[Andy Shevchenko]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 9:49 PM, Mario Limonciello
<mario.limonciello@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> The existing way that the dell-smbios helper module and associated
> other drivers (dell-laptop, dell-wmi) communicate with the platform
> really isn't secure.  It requires creating a buffer in physical
> DMA32 memory space and passing that to the platform via SMM.
>
> Since the platform got a physical memory pointer, you've just got
> to trust that the platform has only modified (and accessed) memory
> within that buffer.
>
> Dell Platform designers recognize this security risk and offer a
> safer way to communicate with the platform over ACPI.  This is
> in turn exposed via a WMI interface to the OS.
>
> When communicating over WMI-ACPI the communication doesn't occur
> with physical memory pointers.  When the ASL is invoked, the fixed
> length ACPI buffer is copied to a small operating region.  The ASL
> will invoke the SMI, and SMM will only have access to this operating
> region.  When the ASL returns the buffer is copied back for the OS
> to process.
>
> This method of communication should also deprecate the usage of the
> dcdbas kernel module and software dependent upon it's interface.
> Instead offer a character device interface for communicating with this
> ASL method to allow userspace to use instead.
>
> To faciliate that this patch series introduces a generic way for WMI
> drivers to be able to create discoverable character devices through
> the WMI bus when desired.
> Requiring WMI drivers to explicitly ask for this functionality will
> act as an effective vendor whitelist to character device creation.
>

Thanks for an update, looks better now.
I'm in the middle of going through it and noticed that patches 6 and 7
sound like a fix to me.
Perhaps better to move it to be first part of the series.

Please, include Andy Lutomirski to Cc list, I'm pretty sure he is
interested in changes like these to WMI.

> changes between v1 and v2:
>  * Introduce another patch to sort the includes in wmi.c
>  * Introduce another patch to cleanup dell_wmi_check_descriptor_buffer
>    checks.
>  * Add a commit message to the pr_fmt commit
>  * Introduce includes to wmi.c in proper location
>  * Add Reviewed-by to relevant patches from Pali
>  * Make the WMI introduction patch fallback to legacy SMI
>    if compiled with CONFIG_DCDBAS
>  * Separate format of WMI and SMI buffers.  WMI buffer supports more
>    arguments and data.
>  * Adjust the rename patch for changes to fallback
>  * Drop sysfs token creation patch
>  * Adjust WMI descriptor check patch for changes to fallback
>  * introduce another patch to remove needless includes in dell-smbios.c
>  * Add token ioctl interface to character device.
>    - Can query number of tokens
>    - Can query values in all tokens
>  * Expose format of all buffers and IOCTL commands to uapi header
>  * Drop the read interface from character device.  It doesn't make
>    sense with multiple different ioctl methods.
>  * Default WMI interface to 32k (This would normally be queried via
>    MOF, but that's not possible yet)
>  * Create separate buffers for WMI and SMI.  If WMI is available,
>    free the SMI buffer.
>  * Reorder patches so all fixups come first in the series.
>
> Mario Limonciello (14):
>   platform/x86: dell-wmi: label driver as handling notifications
>   platform/x86: dell-smbios: drop needless includes
>   platform/x86: dell-wmi: Don't match on descriptor GUID modalias
>   platform/x86: dell-smbios: Add pr_fmt definition to driver
>   platform/x86: wmi: sort include list
>   platform/x86: wmi: Cleanup exit routine in reverse order of init
>   platform/x86: wmi: destroy on cleanup rather than unregister
>   platform/x86: dell-smbios: Introduce a WMI-ACPI interface
>   platform/x86: dell-smbios: rename to dell-wmi-smbios
>   platform/x86: dell-wmi-smbios: Use Dell WMI descriptor check
>   platform/x86: wmi: create character devices when requested by drivers
>   platform/x86: dell-wmi-smbios: introduce character device for
>     userspace
>   platform/x86: Kconfig: Change the default settings for dell-wmi-smbios
>   platform/x86: dell-wmi-smbios: clean up wmi descriptor check
>
>  Documentation/ABI/testing/dell-wmi-smbios          |  10 +
>  MAINTAINERS                                        |   8 +-
>  drivers/platform/x86/Kconfig                       |  13 +-
>  drivers/platform/x86/Makefile                      |   2 +-
>  drivers/platform/x86/dell-laptop.c                 |   2 +-
>  drivers/platform/x86/dell-smbios.c                 | 213 ---------
>  drivers/platform/x86/dell-wmi-smbios.c             | 481 +++++++++++++++++++++
>  .../x86/{dell-smbios.h => dell-wmi-smbios.h}       |  28 +-
>  drivers/platform/x86/dell-wmi.c                    |  78 +---
>  drivers/platform/x86/wmi.c                         | 116 ++++-
>  include/linux/wmi.h                                |   1 +
>  include/uapi/linux/dell-wmi-smbios.h               |  55 +++
>  12 files changed, 674 insertions(+), 333 deletions(-)
>  create mode 100644 Documentation/ABI/testing/dell-wmi-smbios
>  delete mode 100644 drivers/platform/x86/dell-smbios.c
>  create mode 100644 drivers/platform/x86/dell-wmi-smbios.c
>  rename drivers/platform/x86/{dell-smbios.h => dell-wmi-smbios.h} (74%)
>  create mode 100644 include/uapi/linux/dell-wmi-smbios.h
>
> --
> 2.14.1
>



-- 
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko