Re: [edk2-devel] [edk2-discuss] GSoC Proposal

["Marvin Häuser" <mhaeuser@posteo.de>]

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> On 13. Apr 2022, at 20:43, Pedro Falcato <pedro.falcato@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Marvin, Ada,
> 
> Some comments:
> 
> I don't think the purpose of the dynamic linker is to treat EFI as a complete operating system, but to try to eliminate the static linking that may be needlessly duplicating
> code that could instead be put in a single dynamic library.

Which is already possible as part of protocols. In fact, there are such for string and device path operations. What about that model justifies a fundamental change?

> For instance, MdePkg and MdeModulePkg are linked into a *lot* of .efi, instead of being just a library. It'd be nice to see some
> numbers on this (something like Google's bloaty could be run on every .efi file, in order to understand how much file space we would actually save).

The worst issue is PEI because of XIP. This should be out of scope anyway. Also needs numbers of how much new space is occupied by the loader duplicated into DXE and SMM.

> 
> Other comments inline.
> 
>> On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 4:15 PM Marvin Häuser <mhaeuser@posteo.de> wrote:
>> 
>>>> On 13. Apr 2022, at 16:38, Ada Christine <adachristine18@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>> i was replying via the groups.io web interface, I'm guessing that messed up
>>> the thread? i haven't used mailing lists before and don't know how they
>>> work. I'll use my mail client from here on.
>>> 
>>> I'm on board with not treating EFI as an operating system. the more i think
>>> about it the more it looks like scope creep.
>> 
>> Agreed.
>> 
>>> I'm not quite as enthusiastic
>>> about it as i was at first glance.
>>> 
>>> I'm still keen on doing my gsoc proposal for edk, though, and even if this
>>> task and the acpica application are decided to be out of scope unit
>>> testing,
>> 
>> How about fuzz-testing? This is also something edk2 needs quite badly. At Acidanthera, we compile edk2 code in userspace outside the edk2 build system and fuzz with dummy applications.
>> 
> Note: fuzzing is also part of the LLVM instrumentation suite (see https://llvm.org/docs/LibFuzzer.html) and is something I could happily mentor.

Yep :)

>>> clang integration
>> 
>> Pedro and Vitaly are looking for someone to finish ASan: https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/topic/90010978#87991
>> There are working UBSan concepts, but they also need to be mainlined.
> 
> Is Vitaly going to be a mentor? I was assuming it was going to be me and some other, more senior, mentor (possibly Steven Shi, which I included in the task).

Looking was not specifically meant for mentoring, mostly he just wants it done. He offered to mentor after we saw that every Meeting Minutes mail asked for new mentors. Albeit his little activity on the list, I can assure you he is plenty senior for about any task in the list. :)

> Anyway, re: ASAN, if the project includes ASAN, UBSAN and possibly some other sanitizer it's quite possible that it could be considered a large project (which means more hours but a larger stipend too). Fuzzing + coverage could
> be very nice additions to this project idea.
> Also, is stress-testing a decent idea?

Literally any kind of sophisticated testing… please

Best regards,
Marvin

>> 
>>> and source-level debugging are all relevant to
>>> my interests.
>>> 
>>> how about your ideas for security stuff?
>> 
>> I want the entirety of MM to leverage SmmMemLib and to support SMAP. SmmMemLib would then handle UEFI->MMRAM and BaseMemoryLib would only work on MMRAM. Also evaluation of how to best avoid pointers in MM communication buffers would be nice.
>> 
>> There also is a bunch of other stuff, like working out moving a part of CpuDxe into DxeCore to have memory protection live immediately, memory protection in PEI, a replacement for the TE format (it’s buggy and most platforms mostly abandoned it over various issues), and alternatives to guarding critical code with SMM (like allowing NVRAM commits only as part of a reboot).
>> 
>> I personally find all of those projects very important, but I cannot promise many people agree. Especially those that impose global changes (most notably the TE replacement) may be very tedious to submit. Gladly, I believe you can submit multiple proposals (?)
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Marvin
>> 
>>> I'm not very knowledgeable about
>>> trusted platform or secure boot but I'm willing to learn whatever is
>>> necessary to get something spun up for my proposal.
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Apr 13, 2022, 12:05 Marvin Häuser <mhaeuser@posteo.de> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Do you use the “reply all” option in your mail client? Looks like my CCs
>>>> have been dropped again. Comments inline.
>>>> 
>>>>> On 13. Apr 2022, at 12:54, Ada Christine <adachristine18@gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Hi, Marvin
>>>>> 
>>>>> Its similarity to my own latest experiment is the key to what grabbed my
>>>> attention. I have no particular use case in mind for it, but I see its
>>>> potential for anybody developing larger applications in that when a library
>>>> is changed there's no need to distribute a new version of the whole binary,
>>>> just the relevant library module.
>>>> 
>>>> I really do not like the trend of treating UEFI as a full-fledged OS - it
>>>> is not. The most used UEFI applications, OS loaders, are really not that
>>>> huge and are distributed as part of the OS image anyway. Even for less used
>>>> applications, you will always get a full snapshot anyhow. Gladly we don’t
>>>> have auto-update and package management yet. :)
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I slept on it and it occurred to me that the whole thing could operate
>>>> similarly to the shell protocol in that the linker/loader is itself an
>>>> application that does a LoadImage() on the application needing dynamic
>>>> linking facilities.
>>>> 
>>>> That would mean the linker itself is shipped with every application that
>>>> requires it? Otherwise it doesn’t make much sense for it to be an app and
>>>> below’s problems apply.
>>>> 
>>>>> If however the whole plan is making the linker as a DXE and including it
>>>> with the firmware, that I'm not quite as sure about. That would necessarily
>>>> tie any applications using dynamic linking to TianoCore or any firmware
>>>> distribution that derives from it.
>>>> 
>>>> I think that was the idea referred to as “edk2 core” by Steven, but I’d
>>>> like to hear his proposal to be sure. Virtually everyone uses edk2, so that
>>>> itself is not the problem, but versioning is. Vendors are slow to update
>>>> their snapshots or have just given up doing that entirely. Distributing it
>>>> for external applications like OS loaders would mean this can be leveraged
>>>> probably no earlier than 10 years from now. And for in-firmware things, I
>>>> have a hard time thinking about a use-case that outweighs the drawbacks.
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> To shift the topic slightly back to GSoC, however, I'm willing to work
>>>> on other items on the task list. Unit testing and an ACPICA application are
>>>> the alternative projects I had thought about. I need to choose fairly soon
>>>> as the proposal deadline is next Tuesday. I know a tiny bit about porting
>>>> ACPICA as I also have plans to incorporate it into my own project.
>>>> 
>>>> I have a few more ideas for security stuff, but Nate did not confirm them
>>>> as appropriate yet and I’m not here to drive you away from this specific
>>>> task (or the others). However, I’m still curious and concerned. :)
>>>> 
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Marvin
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Pedro Falcato

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