Re: [PATCH v4] tpm: Trigger only missing TPM 2.0 self tests

From: Jarkko Sakkinen
Date: Tue Feb 20 2018 - 17:58:28 EST


On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 12:53:47AM +0200, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> From: Alexander Steffen <Alexander.Steffen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> My Nuvoton 6xx in a Dell XPS-13 has been intermittently failing to work
> (necessitating a reboot). The problem seems to be that the TPM gets into a
> state where the partial self-test doesn't return TPM_RC_SUCCESS (meaning
> all tests have run to completion), but instead returns TPM_RC_TESTING
> (meaning some tests are still running in the background). There are
> various theories that resending the self-test command actually causes the
> tests to restart and thus triggers more TPM_RC_TESTING returns until the
> timeout is exceeded.
>
> There are several issues here: firstly being we shouldn't slow down the
> boot sequence waiting for the self test to complete once the TPM
> backgrounds them. It will actually make available all functions that have
> passed and if it gets a failure return TPM_RC_FAILURE to every subsequent
> command. So the fix is to kick off self tests once and if they return
> TPM_RC_TESTING log that as a backgrounded self test and continue on. In
> order to prevent other tpm users from seeing any TPM_RC_TESTING returns
> (which it might if they send a command that needs a TPM subsystem which is
> still under test), we loop in tpm_transmit_cmd until either a timeout or we
> don't get a TPM_RC_TESTING return.
>
> Finally, there have been observations of strange returns from a partial
> test. One Nuvoton is occasionally returning TPM_RC_COMMAND_CODE, so treat
> any unexpected return from a partial self test as an indication we need to
> run a full self test.
>
> Signed-off-by: Alexander Steffen <Alexander.Steffen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko.sakkine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Fixes: 2482b1bba5122b1d5516c909832bdd282015b8e9
> ---
> v4: Some updatees from jarkko.sakkinen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
> - squashed tpm_buf migration
> - cleaned up a bunch of clutter from the original patch

I decided to rather just clean up the code. Would have taken more
time to explain than do the code change. Hope you don't mind and
hope I didn't break it.

/Jarkko