1NDCTL-WAIT-OVERWRITE(1) ndctl Manual NDCTL-WAIT-OVERWRITE(1)
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6 ndctl-wait-overwrite - wait for an overwrite operation to complete
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9 ndctl wait-overwrite <nmem0> [<nmem1>..<nmemN>] [<options>]
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12 The kernel provides a POLL(2) capable sysfs file (security) to indicate
13 the state of overwrite. This command waits for a change in the state of
14 this file across all specified dimms.
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17 <dimm>
18 A 'nmemX' device name, or a dimm id number. The keyword 'all' can
20 be specified to carry out the operation on every dimm in the system,
21 optionally filtered by bus id (see --bus= option).
22 -b, --bus=
24 Enforce that the operation only be carried on devices that are
25 attached to the given bus. Where bus can be a provider name or a
26 bus id number.
27 -v, --verbose
29 Emit debug messages.
30
32 The Intel Device Specific Methods (DSM) specification v1.7 and v1.8 [1]
33 introduced the following security management operations: enable
34 passhprase, update passphrase, unlock DIMM, disable security, freeze
35 security, secure (crypto) erase, overwrite, master passphrase enable,
36 master passphrase update, and master passphrase secure erase.
37 The security management for NVDIMMs is comprised of two parts. The
39 front end uses the Linux key management framework (trusted and
40 encrypted keys [2]) to store the encrypted passphrases in the
41 kernel-managed keyring. The interface for this is the keyutils utility
42 which uses the key management APIs in the Linux kernel. The back end
43 takes the decrypted payload (which is the DIMM passphrase) and passes
44 it to the DIMM.
45 Unlike other DSMs which are composed by libndctl and sent to the kernel
47 via an ioctl, the security DSMs are managed through the security sysfs
48 attribute under the dimm device. A key-ID is written to the security
49 attribute and the kernel pulls the associated key material from the
50 user keyring that is maintained by the kernel.
51 The security process begins with the generation of a master key that is
53 used to seal (encrypt) the passphrase for the DIMM. There can either be
54 one common master key that is used to encrypt every DIMM’s passphrase,
55 or a separate key can be generated for each DIMM. The master key is
56 also referred to as the key-encryption-key (kek). The kek can either be
57 generated by the TPM (Trusted Platform Module) on the system, or
58 alternatively, the System Master Key can also be used as the kek
59 For testing purposes a user key with randomized payload can also be
61 used as a kek. See [2] for details. To perform any security operations,
62 it is expected that the kek has been added to the kernel’s user keyring
63 as shown in example below:
64 # keyctl show
66 Session Keyring
67 736023423 --alswrv 0 0 keyring: _ses
68 675104189 --alswrv 0 65534 \_ keyring: _uid.0
69 680187394 --alswrv 0 0 \_ trusted: nvdimm-master
70 Before performing any of the security operations, all the regions
72 associated with the DIMM in question need to be disabled. For the
73 overwrite operation, in addition to the regions, the dimm also needs to
74 be disabled.
75 [1] <http://pmem.io/documents/NVDIMM_DSM_Interface-V1.8.pdf>
77 [2] <https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/security/keys/
78 trusted-encrypted.rst>
79 The following sub-sections describe specifics of each security feature.
81 UNLOCK
83 Unlock is performed by the kernel, however a preparation step must
84 happen before the unlock DSM can be issued by the kernel. It is
85 expected that from the initramfs, a setup command (ndctl load-keys) is
86 executed before the libnvdimm module is loaded by modprobe. This
87 command will inject the kek and the encrypted passphrases into the
88 kernel’s user keyring. During the probe of the libnvdimm driver, it
89 will:
90 1. Check the security state of the device and see if the DIMM is
92 locked
93 2. Request the associated encrypted passphrase from the kernel’s user
95 key ring
96 3. Use the kek to decrypt the passphrase
98 4. Create the unlock DSM, copy the decrypted payload into the DSM
100 5. Issue the DSM to unlock the DIMM
102 If the DIMM is already unlocked, the kernel will attempt to revalidate
104 the passphrase. If we fail to revalidate the passphrase, the kernel
105 will freeze the security and disallow any further security
106 configuration changes. A kernel module parameter is available to
107 override this behavior.
108 SETUP USER PASSPHRASE
110 To setup the passphrase for a DIMM, it is expected that the kek to be
111 used is present in the kernel’s user keyring. The kek encrypts the DIMM
112 passphrase using the enc32 key format. The plaintext passphrase is
113 never provided by or made visible to the user. It is instead randomly
114 generated by the kernel and userspace does not have access to it. Upon
115 encryption, a binary blob of the passphrase is written to the
116 passphrase blob storage directory (/etc/ndctl/keys). The user is
117 responsible for backing up the passphrase blobs to a secure location.
118 UPDATE USER PASSPHRASE
120 The update user passphrase operation uses the same DSM command as
121 enable user passphrase. Most of the work is done on the key management
122 side. The user has the option of providing a new kek for the new
123 passphrase, but continuing to use the existing kek is also acceptable.
124 The following operations are performed for update-passphrase:
125 1. Remove the encrypted passphrase from the kernel’s user keyring.
127 2. Rename the passphrase blob to old.
129 3. Load this old passphrase blob into the keyring with an "old" name.
131 4. Create the new passphrase and encrypt with the kek.
133 5. Send DSM with the old and new decrypted passphrases.
135 6. Remove old passphrase and the passphrase blob from the keyring.
137 REMOVE USER PASSPHRASE
139 The key-ID for the passphrase to be removed is written to sysfs. The
140 kernel then sends the DSM to disable security, and the passphrase is
141 then removed from the keyring, and the associated passphrase blob is
142 deleted.
143 CRYPTO (SECURE) ERASE
145 This operation is similar to remove-passphrase. The kernel issues a
146 WBINVD instruction before and after the operation to ensure no data
147 corruption from a stale CPU cache. Use ndctl’s sanitize-dimm command
148 with the --crypto-erase option to perform this operation.
149 OVERWRITE
151 This is invoked using --overwrite option for ndctl sanitize-dimm. The
152 overwrite operation wipes the entire NVDIMM. The operation can take a
153 significant amount of time. NOTE: When the command returns
154 successfully, it just means overwrite has been successfully started,
155 and not that the overwrite is complete. Subsequently, 'ndctl
156 wait-overwrite’can be used to wait for the NVDIMMs that are performing
157 overwrite. Upon successful completion of an overwrite, the WBINVD
158 instruction is issued by the kernel. If both --crypto-erase and
159 --overwrite options are supplied, then crypto-erase is performed before
160 overwrite.
161 SECURITY FREEZE
163 This operation does not require a passphrase. This will cause any
164 security command other than a status query to be locked out until the
165 next boot.
166 MASTER PASSPHRASE SETUP, UPDATE, and CRYPTO ERASE
168 These operations are similar to the user passphrase enable and update.
169 The only difference is that a different passphrase is used. The master
170 passphrase has no relation to the master key (kek) which is used for
171 encryption of either passphrase.
172
174 Copyright (c) 2016 - 2019, Intel Corporation. License GPLv2: GNU GPL
175 version 2 <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software:
176 you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to
177 the extent permitted by law.
178
180 ndctl-sanitize-dimm(1)
181ndctl 2019-05-10 NDCTL-WAIT-OVERWRITE(1)