On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 11:51:09PM -0400, John Snow wrote: > I never knew what this option did, but the answer is ... strange! > > It's only defined for linux, in os-posix.c. When called, it calls > fips_set_state(true), located in osdep.c. > > This will read /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled and set the static global > 'fips_enabled' to true if this setting is on.
IIRC the idea is to have a global switch to enable fips compilance for the whole distro. RH specific. rhel-7 kernel has it. rhel-8 kernel too, so it probably isn't obsolete. Not present in mainline kernels. I'm wondering what the point of the -enablefips switch is. Shouldn't qemu check /proc/sys/crypto/fips_enabled unconditionally instead? > (Tangent: what does *this* setting actually control? Should QEMU > meaningfully change its behavior when it's set?) fips is a security policy ... > This static global is exposed via the getter fips_get_state(). This > function is called only by vnc.c, and appears to disable the use of the > password option for -vnc. ... yes, "no passwords" is one of the rules. There are probably more. > (If we really do want to keep it, it should probably go under -global > somewhere instead to help reduce flag clutter, but we'd need to have a > chat about what fips compliance means for literally every other spot in > QEMU that is capable of using or receiving a cleartext password.) Yep. IIRC for spice this is handled in libspice-server. We need to look at blockdev encryption I guess. Any other places where qemu uses passwords directly? I think we don't have to worry about indirect usage (sasl). take care, Gerd
