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authorDaniel De Graaf <dgdegra@tycho.nsa.gov>2013-07-30 21:29:47 +0400
committerKonrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>2013-08-09 18:57:06 +0400
commite2683957fb268c6b29316fd9e7191e13239a30a5 (patch)
treedca5158cc38a7b469f36999749d5a9bc100ded01 /Documentation/tpm
parent6efa20e49b9cb1db1ab66870cc37323474a75a13 (diff)
downloadlinux-e2683957fb268c6b29316fd9e7191e13239a30a5.tar.xz
drivers/tpm: add xen tpmfront interface
This is a complete rewrite of the Xen TPM frontend driver, taking advantage of a simplified frontend/backend interface and adding support for cancellation and timeouts. The backend for this driver is provided by a vTPM stub domain using the interface in Xen 4.3. Signed-off-by: Daniel De Graaf <dgdegra@tycho.nsa.gov> Acked-by: Matthew Fioravante <matthew.fioravante@jhuapl.edu> Reviewed-by: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com> Acked-by: Peter Huewe <peterhuewe@gmx.de> Reviewed-by: Peter Huewe <peterhuewe@gmx.de> Signed-off-by: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
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+Virtual TPM interface for Xen
+
+Authors: Matthew Fioravante (JHUAPL), Daniel De Graaf (NSA)
+
+This document describes the virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) subsystem for
+Xen. The reader is assumed to have familiarity with building and installing Xen,
+Linux, and a basic understanding of the TPM and vTPM concepts.
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The goal of this work is to provide a TPM functionality to a virtual guest
+operating system (in Xen terms, a DomU). This allows programs to interact with
+a TPM in a virtual system the same way they interact with a TPM on the physical
+system. Each guest gets its own unique, emulated, software TPM. However, each
+of the vTPM's secrets (Keys, NVRAM, etc) are managed by a vTPM Manager domain,
+which seals the secrets to the Physical TPM. If the process of creating each of
+these domains (manager, vTPM, and guest) is trusted, the vTPM subsystem extends
+the chain of trust rooted in the hardware TPM to virtual machines in Xen. Each
+major component of vTPM is implemented as a separate domain, providing secure
+separation guaranteed by the hypervisor. The vTPM domains are implemented in
+mini-os to reduce memory and processor overhead.
+
+This mini-os vTPM subsystem was built on top of the previous vTPM work done by
+IBM and Intel corporation.
+
+
+DESIGN OVERVIEW
+---------------
+
+The architecture of vTPM is described below:
+
++------------------+
+| Linux DomU | ...
+| | ^ |
+| v | |
+| xen-tpmfront |
++------------------+
+ | ^
+ v |
++------------------+
+| mini-os/tpmback |
+| | ^ |
+| v | |
+| vtpm-stubdom | ...
+| | ^ |
+| v | |
+| mini-os/tpmfront |
++------------------+
+ | ^
+ v |
++------------------+
+| mini-os/tpmback |
+| | ^ |
+| v | |
+| vtpmmgr-stubdom |
+| | ^ |
+| v | |
+| mini-os/tpm_tis |
++------------------+
+ | ^
+ v |
++------------------+
+| Hardware TPM |
++------------------+
+
+ * Linux DomU: The Linux based guest that wants to use a vTPM. There may be
+ more than one of these.
+
+ * xen-tpmfront.ko: Linux kernel virtual TPM frontend driver. This driver
+ provides vTPM access to a Linux-based DomU.
+
+ * mini-os/tpmback: Mini-os TPM backend driver. The Linux frontend driver
+ connects to this backend driver to facilitate communications
+ between the Linux DomU and its vTPM. This driver is also
+ used by vtpmmgr-stubdom to communicate with vtpm-stubdom.
+
+ * vtpm-stubdom: A mini-os stub domain that implements a vTPM. There is a
+ one to one mapping between running vtpm-stubdom instances and
+ logical vtpms on the system. The vTPM Platform Configuration
+ Registers (PCRs) are normally all initialized to zero.
+
+ * mini-os/tpmfront: Mini-os TPM frontend driver. The vTPM mini-os domain
+ vtpm-stubdom uses this driver to communicate with
+ vtpmmgr-stubdom. This driver is also used in mini-os
+ domains such as pv-grub that talk to the vTPM domain.
+
+ * vtpmmgr-stubdom: A mini-os domain that implements the vTPM manager. There is
+ only one vTPM manager and it should be running during the
+ entire lifetime of the machine. This domain regulates
+ access to the physical TPM on the system and secures the
+ persistent state of each vTPM.
+
+ * mini-os/tpm_tis: Mini-os TPM version 1.2 TPM Interface Specification (TIS)
+ driver. This driver used by vtpmmgr-stubdom to talk directly to
+ the hardware TPM. Communication is facilitated by mapping
+ hardware memory pages into vtpmmgr-stubdom.
+
+ * Hardware TPM: The physical TPM that is soldered onto the motherboard.
+
+
+INTEGRATION WITH XEN
+--------------------
+
+Support for the vTPM driver was added in Xen using the libxl toolstack in Xen
+4.3. See the Xen documentation (docs/misc/vtpm.txt) for details on setting up
+the vTPM and vTPM Manager stub domains. Once the stub domains are running, a
+vTPM device is set up in the same manner as a disk or network device in the
+domain's configuration file.
+
+In order to use features such as IMA that require a TPM to be loaded prior to
+the initrd, the xen-tpmfront driver must be compiled in to the kernel. If not
+using such features, the driver can be compiled as a module and will be loaded
+as usual.