Re: [RFC 6/6] Revert "pstore/ram_core: Do not reset restored zone's position and size"

[Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>]

On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 08:42:12PM +0100, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 7:22 PM, Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 07:16:28PM +0100, Kees Cook wrote:
> >> On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 7:00 PM, Joel Fernandes (Google)
> >> <joel@joelfernandes.org> wrote:
> >> > This reverts commit 25b63da64708212985c06c7f8b089d356efdd9cf.
> >> >
> >> > Due to the commit which is being reverted here, it is not possible to
> >> > know if pstore's messages were from a previous boot, or from very old
> >> > boots. This creates an awkard situation where its unclear if crash or
> >> > other logs are from the previous boot or from very old boots. Also
> >> > typically we dump the pstore buffers after one reboot and are interested
> >> > in only the previous boot's crash so let us reset the buffer after we
> >> > save them.
> >> >
> >> > Lastly, if we don't zap them, then I think it is possible that part of
> >> > the buffer will be from this boot and the other parts will be from
> >> > previous boots. So this revert fixes all of this by calling
> >> > persistent_ram_zap always.
> >>
> >> I like the other patches (comments coming), but not this one: it's
> >> very intentional to keep all crashes around until they're explicitly
> >> unlinked from the pstore filesystem from userspace. Especially true
> >> for catching chains of kernel crashes, or a failed log collection,
> >> etc. Surviving multiple reboots is the expected behavior on Chrome OS
> >> too.
> >
> > Oh, ok. Hence the RFC tag ;-) We can drop this one then. I forgot that
> > unlinking was another way to clear the logs.
> 
> In another thread I discovered that the "single prz" ones actually
> _are_ zapped at boot. I didn't realize, but it explains why pmsg would
> vanish on me sometimes. ;) I always thought I was just doing something
> wrong with it. (And I wonder if it's actually a bug that pmsg is
> zapped -- console doesn't matter: it's overwritten every boot by
> design.)

Oh yeah they are. So seems like some are zapped on boot and some aren't then.
Hmm, I would think it makes sense not to boot-zap dmesg ever, since that's
crash logs someone may want to see after many reboots. But console and pmsg
should be since those just "what happened on the last boot". I guess it
should be made clear in some structure or something which types are zapped on
boot, and which ones aren't. That'll make it clear when adding a new type
about that behavior, instead of relying on the assumption that single prz are
zapped and multiple ones aren't. Like for ftrace, since the per-cpu
configuration was added, it will now be zapped on boot if it is using a
per-cpu configuration and not zapped on boot if it isn't right?  That would
seem a bit inconsistent.

thanks!
-Joel