[PATCH] KEYS: trusted: allow module init if TPM is inactive or deactivated

[Jarkko Sakkinen]

On Fri, Aug 02, 2019 at 09:27:22AM -0500, Tyler Hicks wrote:
> On 2019-08-02 10:21:16, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> > On 8/1/2019 6:32 PM, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 15, 2019 at 06:44:28PM +0200, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> > > > According to the bug report at https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/62678,
> > > > the trusted module is a dependency of the ecryptfs module. We should
> > > > load the trusted module even if the TPM is inactive or deactivated.
> > > > 
> > > > Given that commit 782779b60faa ("tpm: Actually fail on TPM errors during
> > > > "get random"") changes the return code of tpm_get_random(), the patch
> > > > should be modified to ignore the -EIO error. I will send a new version.
> > > 
> > > Do you have information where this dependency comes from?
> > 
> > ecryptfs retrieves the encryption key from encrypted keys (see
> > ecryptfs_get_encrypted_key()).
> 
> That has been there for many years with any problems. It was added
> in 2011:
> 
>  commit 1252cc3b232e582e887623dc5f70979418caaaa2
>  Author: Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu at polito.it>
>  Date:   Mon Jun 27 13:45:45 2011 +0200
> 
>      eCryptfs: added support for the encrypted key type
> 
> What's recently changed the situation is this patch:
> 
>  commit 240730437deb213a58915830884e1a99045624dc
>  Author: Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu at huawei.com>
>  Date:   Wed Feb 6 17:24:51 2019 +0100
> 
>      KEYS: trusted: explicitly use tpm_chip structure from tpm_default_chip()
> 
> Now eCryptfs has a hard dependency on a TPM chip that's working
> as expected even if eCryptfs (or the rest of the system) isn't utilizing
> the TPM. If the TPM behaves unexpectedly, you can't access your files.
> We need to get this straightened out soon.

I agree with this conclusion that eCryptfs needs to be fixed, not
another workaround to trusted.ko.

/Jarkko