hradec / safeboot-loader

Linux kernel module to use UEFI Block IO Protocol devices. Probably not a good idea.

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Linux-as-an-EFI-Bootloader

windows installer chainloaded from Linux

This tree allows Linux to run as an EFI boot loader application and to hand control back to the UEFI firmware so that it can chainload into another EFI executable, such as the Windows boot loader. It doesn't touch any devices or UEFI memory, so the firmware state is retained upon resuming the UEFI context.

uefidev

This module provides Linux device driver wrappers for several of the UEFI vendor firmwre provided interfaces. Normally this is not possible since Linux calls gBS->ExitBootServices(), which tears down most of the UEFI device drivers, and because Linux does not have a memory mapping for the UEFI linear memory.

This module depends on a specially modified loader for the kernel that makes the first call to ExitBootServices() into a NOP, and then returns succes. The loader also allocates memory for the kernel at 1 GB and passes this to the kernel with the memmap=exactmap command line option option to ensure that the Linux kernel doesn't accidentally modify any of the UEFI data structures.

The technique of writing directly to CR3 is a total expedient hack and definitely not a production ready sort of way to restore the memory map.

Block Devices

This submodule provides an interface to the vendor firmware's registered EFI_BLOCK_IO_PROTOCOL handlers, which allows Linux to use them as if they were normal block devices. UEFI tends to create a block device for the entire disk and then separate ones for each partitions. You can also have Linux detect the partitions by using losetup on the whole disk device:

losetup -f -P /dev/uefi0
mount /dev/loop0p2 /boot

Or something like this, although your device numbers might be different:

mount -o ro /dev/uefi6 /boot

You can retrieve the UEFI DevicePath or handle from

cat /sys/devices/virtual/block/uefi6/uefi_devicepath
cat /sys/devices/virtual/block/uefi6/uefi_handle

Todo:

  • Benchmark the performance
  • Test with the ramdisk module
  • Support CDROM devices with their big block sizes

Ramdisk

The Linux boot loader can pass data to the next stage via a UEFI ramdisk, which can be created by echo'ing the disk image file name into /sys/firmware/efi/ramdisk.

Loader

New UEFI modules can be loaded by echo'ing the file name into /sys/firmware/efi/loader. This should measure them into the TPM and eventlog. It can also be used to chain load the next stage, although this won't turn off the Linux interrupts and can cause problems. Use the chainload tool instead.

Network Interfaces

This submodule create an ethernet interface for each of the vendor firmware's registered EFI_SIMPLE_NETWORK_PROTOCOL devices. The Linux skb transmit functions put packets directly on the wire, and there is a periodic timer that polls at 100 Hz for up to ten packets. It's not going to be a fast interface, but it will hopefully be enough to perform attestations or other boot time activities.

Todo:

  • Make polling timer a parameter
  • Interface with the UEFI event system?

TPM Devices

Because ACPI and PCI are disabled, the TPM is not currently visible to Linux via the normal channels. Instead this submodule will query the EFI_TCG2_PROTOCOL objects and create TPM character devices for each of them. While the UEFI object has methods for high-level things like "Extend a PCR and create an event log entry", this module uses the SubmitCommand method to send the raw commands that the Linux driver generates. It buffers the response and returns it immediately; there is no overlapping of commands or multi-threading allowed.

Todo:

  • Figure out how to expose the TPM.
  • Figure out how to export the TPM event log
  • Change the event log to be "live" rather than a copy

Chainload

The chainload program has a small purgatory to resume the UEFI context that the loader.efi has stored at 0x100 in physical memory. It also assumes that the next image to be run is in virtual memory at 0x40100000 and calls gBS->LoadImage() and then gBS->StartImage() on it to transfer control to the new kernel.

Typical usage is:

mount -o ro /dev/uefi6 /boot
chainload -v --boot-device uefi6 /boot/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi
  • Device path for the loaded image is passed in

Building

The Makefile will download and patch a 5.4.117 kernel with the to add the uefidev kernel module as an in-tree build option. It will then apply a minimal config that has no PCI drivers and uses the EFI framebuffer for video.

make -j$(nproc)

This will produce after a while bootx64.efi that contains the kernel and a minimal initrd, unified with the loader.efi program using the same objcopy technique as the systemd EFI stub. You can sign it with sbsigntool for SecureBoot systems or boot it without signing on qemu.

Creating the local machine state (not including the TPM):

qemu-img create win10.hda 12G

Running in QEMU

Launching the emulator is messy due to the need to pass in the separate UEFI nvram (the one in config/OVMF_VARS.fd has been modified so that the UEFI boot order starts with PXE; otherwise the virtual machine will always boot via the hard disk since OVMF ignores the -boot n option to request a network boot).

You can run make qemu or:

qemu-system-x86_64 \
  -M q35,accel=kvm \
  -m 2G \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,readonly,file=/usr/share/OVMF/OVMF_CODE.fd \
  -drive if=pflash,format=raw,file=config/OVMF_VARS.fd \
  -netdev user,id=eth0,tftp=.,bootfile=build/bootx64.efi \
  -device e1000,netdev=eth0 \
  -serial stdio \
  -cdrom win10.iso \
  -hda win10.img

TPM emulation

To emulate a TPM 2.0, install or build the swtpm package and run with make TPM=1 qemu. The TPM's EK will be in build/tpm-state/ek.pem for attestation verification.

Tested with:

Debugging

For more convenient debugging, you can turn off the graphical QEMU window: make NOGRAPHIC=1 qemu

Todo

  • Wrap kernel building in the Makefile
  • initrd.cpio building
  • Unified image building with the loader
  • LinuxKit or buildroot integration?

Kernel command line

memmap=exactmap,32K@0G,512M@1G noefi acpi=off
  • Make the loader built this addition to the command line
  • Allocate the SMP trampoline correclty in UEFI

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Linux kernel module to use UEFI Block IO Protocol devices. Probably not a good idea.


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