ovl: Add framework for verity support

This adds the scaffolding (docs, config, mount options) for supporting
the new digest field in the metacopy xattr. This contains a fs-verity
digest that need to match the fs-verity digest of the lowerdata
file. The mount option "verity" specifies how this xattr is handled.

If you enable verity ("verity=on") all existing xattrs are validated
before use, and during metacopy we generate verity xattr in the upper
metacopy file (if the source file has verity enabled). This means
later accesses can guarantee that the same data is used.

Additionally you can use "verity=require". In this mode all metacopy
files must have a valid verity xattr. For this to work metadata
copy-up must be able to create a verity xattr (so that later accesses
are validated). Therefore, in this mode, if the lower data file
doesn't have fs-verity enabled we fall back to a full copy rather than
a metacopy.

Actual implementation follows in a separate commit.

Signed-off-by: Alexander Larsson <alexl@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>

1 files changed, 47 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst
index eb7d2c88ddec..b63e0db03631 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/overlayfs.rst
@@ -405,6 +405,53 @@ when a "metacopy" file in one of the lower layers above it, has a "redirect"
 to the absolute path of the "lower data" file in the "data-only" lower layer.
 
 
+fs-verity support
+----------------------
+
+During metadata copy up of a lower file, if the source file has
+fs-verity enabled and overlay verity support is enabled, then the
+digest of the lower file is added to the "trusted.overlay.metacopy"
+xattr. This is then used to verify the content of the lower file
+each the time the metacopy file is opened.
+
+When a layer containing verity xattrs is used, it means that any such
+metacopy file in the upper layer is guaranteed to match the content
+that was in the lower at the time of the copy-up. If at any time
+(during a mount, after a remount, etc) such a file in the lower is
+replaced or modified in any way, access to the corresponding file in
+overlayfs will result in EIO errors (either on open, due to overlayfs
+digest check, or from a later read due to fs-verity) and a detailed
+error is printed to the kernel logs. For more details of how fs-verity
+file access works, see :ref:`Documentation/filesystems/fsverity.rst
+<accessing_verity_files>`.
+
+Verity can be used as a general robustness check to detect accidental
+changes in the overlayfs directories in use. But, with additional care
+it can also give more powerful guarantees. For example, if the upper
+layer is fully trusted (by using dm-verity or something similar), then
+an untrusted lower layer can be used to supply validated file content
+for all metacopy files.  If additionally the untrusted lower
+directories are specified as "Data-only", then they can only supply
+such file content, and the entire mount can be trusted to match the
+upper layer.
+
+This feature is controlled by the "verity" mount option, which
+supports these values:
+
+- "off":
+    The metacopy digest is never generated or used. This is the
+    default if verity option is not specified.
+- "on":
+    Whenever a metacopy files specifies an expected digest, the
+    corresponding data file must match the specified digest. When
+    generating a metacopy file the verity digest will be set in it
+    based on the source file (if it has one).
+- "require":
+    Same as "on", but additionally all metacopy files must specify a
+    digest (or EIO is returned on open). This means metadata copy up
+    will only be used if the data file has fs-verity enabled,
+    otherwise a full copy-up is used.
+
 Sharing and copying layers
 --------------------------