Skip to content
Commit a1b87d54 authored by Ard Biesheuvel's avatar Ard Biesheuvel Committed by Borislav Petkov (AMD)
Browse files

x86/efistub: Avoid legacy decompressor when doing EFI boot



The bare metal decompressor code was never really intended to run in a
hosted environment such as the EFI boot services, and does a few things
that are becoming problematic in the context of EFI boot now that the
logo requirements are getting tighter: EFI executables will no longer be
allowed to consist of a single executable section that is mapped with
read, write and execute permissions if they are intended for use in a
context where Secure Boot is enabled (and where Microsoft's set of
certificates is used, i.e., every x86 PC built to run Windows).

To avoid stepping on reserved memory before having inspected the E820
tables, and to ensure the correct placement when running a kernel build
that is non-relocatable, the bare metal decompressor moves its own
executable image to the end of the allocation that was reserved for it,
in order to perform the decompression in place. This means the region in
question requires both write and execute permissions, which either need
to be given upfront (which EFI will no longer permit), or need to be
applied on demand using the existing page fault handling framework.

However, the physical placement of the kernel is usually randomized
anyway, and even if it isn't, a dedicated decompression output buffer
can be allocated anywhere in memory using EFI APIs when still running in
the boot services, given that EFI support already implies a relocatable
kernel. This means that decompression in place is never necessary, nor
is moving the compressed image from one end to the other.

Since EFI already maps all of memory 1:1, it is also unnecessary to
create new page tables or handle page faults when decompressing the
kernel. That means there is also no need to replace the special
exception handlers for SEV. Generally, there is little need to do
any of the things that the decompressor does beyond

- initialize SEV encryption, if needed,
- perform the 4/5 level paging switch, if needed,
- decompress the kernel
- relocate the kernel

So do all of this from the EFI stub code, and avoid the bare metal
decompressor altogether.

Signed-off-by: default avatarArd Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarBorislav Petkov (AMD) <bp@alien8.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230807162720.545787-24-ardb@kernel.org
parent 31c77a50
0% or .
You are about to add 0 people to the discussion. Proceed with caution.
Finish editing this message first!
Please register or to comment