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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/device-mapper/dm-integrity.txt')
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diff --git a/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-integrity.txt b/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-integrity.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..f33e3ade7a09 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/device-mapper/dm-integrity.txt @@ -0,0 +1,199 @@ +The dm-integrity target emulates a block device that has additional +per-sector tags that can be used for storing integrity information. + +A general problem with storing integrity tags with every sector is that +writing the sector and the integrity tag must be atomic - i.e. in case of +crash, either both sector and integrity tag or none of them is written. + +To guarantee write atomicity, the dm-integrity target uses journal, it +writes sector data and integrity tags into a journal, commits the journal +and then copies the data and integrity tags to their respective location. + +The dm-integrity target can be used with the dm-crypt target - in this +situation the dm-crypt target creates the integrity data and passes them +to the dm-integrity target via bio_integrity_payload attached to the bio. +In this mode, the dm-crypt and dm-integrity targets provide authenticated +disk encryption - if the attacker modifies the encrypted device, an I/O +error is returned instead of random data. + +The dm-integrity target can also be used as a standalone target, in this +mode it calculates and verifies the integrity tag internally. In this +mode, the dm-integrity target can be used to detect silent data +corruption on the disk or in the I/O path. + + +When loading the target for the first time, the kernel driver will format +the device. But it will only format the device if the superblock contains +zeroes. If the superblock is neither valid nor zeroed, the dm-integrity +target can't be loaded. + +To use the target for the first time: +1. overwrite the superblock with zeroes +2. load the dm-integrity target with one-sector size, the kernel driver + will format the device +3. unload the dm-integrity target +4. read the "provided_data_sectors" value from the superblock +5. load the dm-integrity target with the the target size + "provided_data_sectors" +6. if you want to use dm-integrity with dm-crypt, load the dm-crypt target + with the size "provided_data_sectors" + + +Target arguments: + +1. the underlying block device + +2. the number of reserved sector at the beginning of the device - the + dm-integrity won't read of write these sectors + +3. the size of the integrity tag (if "-" is used, the size is taken from + the internal-hash algorithm) + +4. mode: + D - direct writes (without journal) - in this mode, journaling is + not used and data sectors and integrity tags are written + separately. In case of crash, it is possible that the data + and integrity tag doesn't match. + J - journaled writes - data and integrity tags are written to the + journal and atomicity is guaranteed. In case of crash, + either both data and tag or none of them are written. The + journaled mode degrades write throughput twice because the + data have to be written twice. + R - recovery mode - in this mode, journal is not replayed, + checksums are not checked and writes to the device are not + allowed. This mode is useful for data recovery if the + device cannot be activated in any of the other standard + modes. + +5. the number of additional arguments + +Additional arguments: + +journal_sectors:number + The size of journal, this argument is used only if formatting the + device. If the device is already formatted, the value from the + superblock is used. + +interleave_sectors:number + The number of interleaved sectors. This values is rounded down to + a power of two. If the device is already formatted, the value from + the superblock is used. + +buffer_sectors:number + The number of sectors in one buffer. The value is rounded down to + a power of two. + + The tag area is accessed using buffers, the buffer size is + configurable. The large buffer size means that the I/O size will + be larger, but there could be less I/Os issued. + +journal_watermark:number + The journal watermark in percents. When the size of the journal + exceeds this watermark, the thread that flushes the journal will + be started. + +commit_time:number + Commit time in milliseconds. When this time passes, the journal is + written. The journal is also written immediatelly if the FLUSH + request is received. + +internal_hash:algorithm(:key) (the key is optional) + Use internal hash or crc. + When this argument is used, the dm-integrity target won't accept + integrity tags from the upper target, but it will automatically + generate and verify the integrity tags. + + You can use a crc algorithm (such as crc32), then integrity target + will protect the data against accidental corruption. + You can also use a hmac algorithm (for example + "hmac(sha256):0123456789abcdef"), in this mode it will provide + cryptographic authentication of the data without encryption. + + When this argument is not used, the integrity tags are accepted + from an upper layer target, such as dm-crypt. The upper layer + target should check the validity of the integrity tags. + +journal_crypt:algorithm(:key) (the key is optional) + Encrypt the journal using given algorithm to make sure that the + attacker can't read the journal. You can use a block cipher here + (such as "cbc(aes)") or a stream cipher (for example "chacha20", + "salsa20", "ctr(aes)" or "ecb(arc4)"). + + The journal contains history of last writes to the block device, + an attacker reading the journal could see the last sector nubmers + that were written. From the sector numbers, the attacker can infer + the size of files that were written. To protect against this + situation, you can encrypt the journal. + +journal_mac:algorithm(:key) (the key is optional) + Protect sector numbers in the journal from accidental or malicious + modification. To protect against accidental modification, use a + crc algorithm, to protect against malicious modification, use a + hmac algorithm with a key. + + This option is not needed when using internal-hash because in this + mode, the integrity of journal entries is checked when replaying + the journal. Thus, modified sector number would be detected at + this stage. + +block_size:number + The size of a data block in bytes. The larger the block size the + less overhead there is for per-block integrity metadata. + Supported values are 512, 1024, 2048 and 4096 bytes. If not + specified the default block size is 512 bytes. + +The journal mode (D/J), buffer_sectors, journal_watermark, commit_time can +be changed when reloading the target (load an inactive table and swap the +tables with suspend and resume). The other arguments should not be changed +when reloading the target because the layout of disk data depend on them +and the reloaded target would be non-functional. + + +The layout of the formatted block device: +* reserved sectors (they are not used by this target, they can be used for + storing LUKS metadata or for other purpose), the size of the reserved + area is specified in the target arguments +* superblock (4kiB) + * magic string - identifies that the device was formatted + * version + * log2(interleave sectors) + * integrity tag size + * the number of journal sections + * provided data sectors - the number of sectors that this target + provides (i.e. the size of the device minus the size of all + metadata and padding). The user of this target should not send + bios that access data beyond the "provided data sectors" limit. + * flags - a flag is set if journal_mac is used +* journal + The journal is divided into sections, each section contains: + * metadata area (4kiB), it contains journal entries + every journal entry contains: + * logical sector (specifies where the data and tag should + be written) + * last 8 bytes of data + * integrity tag (the size is specified in the superblock) + every metadata sector ends with + * mac (8-bytes), all the macs in 8 metadata sectors form a + 64-byte value. It is used to store hmac of sector + numbers in the journal section, to protect against a + possibility that the attacker tampers with sector + numbers in the journal. + * commit id + * data area (the size is variable; it depends on how many journal + entries fit into the metadata area) + every sector in the data area contains: + * data (504 bytes of data, the last 8 bytes are stored in + the journal entry) + * commit id + To test if the whole journal section was written correctly, every + 512-byte sector of the journal ends with 8-byte commit id. If the + commit id matches on all sectors in a journal section, then it is + assumed that the section was written correctly. If the commit id + doesn't match, the section was written partially and it should not + be replayed. +* one or more runs of interleaved tags and data. Each run contains: + * tag area - it contains integrity tags. There is one tag for each + sector in the data area + * data area - it contains data sectors. The number of data sectors + in one run must be a power of two. log2 of this value is stored + in the superblock. |