[U-Boot] Using CONFIG_ENV_FLAGS_LIST

[Stefano Babic]

Hi Claudius,

On 02/09/19 16:02, Claudius Heine wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am currently looking into variable flags in order to make some
> variables read-only for secure boot.
> 
> The idea is that the u-boot binary is signed, while the environment
> file/partition is not. So the built-in default environment of u-boot can
> be trusted, while the external environment cannot. The assumption is
> that those flags can be used to customize the validation when the
> external environment is loaded or scripts/commands are executed.
> 
> From the '/README' I gather that the access attributes can be any of
> "any", "read-only", "write-once" or "change-default".
> 
> I first tried to restrict the variables by choosing 'read-only', but
> apparently this applies to the internal environment as well, and now
> those variables are not loaded from the internal environment.
> 
> Then I tried 'write-once', this worked now as expected from within
> u-boot, but I could modify the environment from the linux userspace via
> fw_setenv and those changes appear in u-boot as well. The same for
> 'change-default'.
> 
> Is there another way to fill the internal environment variable hash
> table, so that 'read-only' works as expected?
> 
> Heiko wrote some patches that change the behavior of the environment
> loading so that the internal environment is loaded first before the
> external environment.

But I think this is not mainlined.

> This way 'write-once' should work as expected, but
> I think 'read-only' should work that way already and we are missing
> something here.

But '.flags' shoudl also be set as write once, else it is possible to
rewrite the .flags variable making all environment read-write.

Heiko's patch is a work-around to get a signed environment. What I had
for is to provide a signed environment (outside U-Boot with
libubootenv), and U-Boot just verifies as it does for a kernel image -
U-Boot does not need a private key, but U-Boot loses "saveenv" and the
environment can be changed only from user space.

Regards,
Stefano



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