[redhat-lspp] LSPP Development Telecon 11/06/2006 Minutes

Loulwa Salem loulwas at us.ibm.com
Tue Nov 7 00:33:59 UTC 2006


11/06/2006 lspp Meeting Minutes:
===============================
   Attendees

   Robin Redden (IBM) - RR
   Lawrence Wilson (IBM) - LW
   George Wilson (IBM) - GW
   Kris Wilson (IBM) - KEW
   Loulwa Salem (IBM) - LS
   Michael Thompson (IBM) - MT
   Joy Latten (IBM) - JL
   Kylene Hall (IBM) - KH
   Irina Boverman (Red Hat) - IB
   Steve Grubb (Red Hat) - SG
   Dan Walsh (Red Hat) - DW
   James Antill (Red Hat) - JA
   Matt Anderson (HP) - MA
   Klaus Weidner (Atsec) - KW
   Darrel Goeddel (TCS) - DG
   Chad Hanson (TCS) - CH

Tentative Agenda:

     GW: I hacked on self test and I have something to put on the list, it is
	still incomplete but you can use it to test what you have now. Thanks
	for the policy Matt, I didn't try it yet.
     MA: It should be good, just make sure you put that option in there, the one
	I sent you in the email.
     JA: the aide policy seems to include a massive list of types at the end. Is
	that all the types it looks at?
     MA: yes
     JA: my problem is if someone installs lspp and have aide to look at it, then
	it needs to be added
     KW: it would make more sense to give aide a read override
     MA: perhaps that works
     GW: yeah, might make the most sense

Kernel update
-------------
     GW: any one wants to talk about current kernel. I had a problem with LVM and
	the milestone 8 build. It maybe how my initrd got built, any one ran
	into that? alright .. apparently not. I'll try that again with lvm,
	maybe a driver didn't get included. Any one has anything to talk about?
	is IPSec working?
     JL: yes, so far everything seems ok
     GW: did you run stress tests
     JL: not for .54, but I can start one today. Steve I'll mail you my audit
	changes, I made alot. I'll run stress test with those audit changed
	before I leave today
     SG: ok
     JL: I have not seen any problems in that regard
     GW: to the extent that we tested it
     JL: yes, the tests we ran so far seem ok

Beta / Rawhide update
---------------------
     GW: any problems with the current beta. I think the install went smoothly
     KW: netlabel tools are now in beta, so I updated the kickstart. The latest
	beta, does it already have all pieces needed for labeled ipsec, or we
	need other pieces.
     JL: I think we updated the policy. but that might have been the previous
	beta
     KW: the latest has the 2.4 policy, so that should have all the pieces, if
	not please complain
     GW: so you shouldn't get anything out of rawhide now
     JL: no we shouldn't
     KW: At this stage, we should be able to use just beta, maybe get a kernel, 	
	but things should be in beta

SELinux base update
-------------------

MLS policy issues
------------------
     GW: Any policy issue?
     KW: I am unable to login in enforcing mode for level other than non system
	low, as range s1-s1, I also tried local login
     GW: I set an ealuser to have middle range
     KW: and that worked for you to login with?
     GW: yes
     KW: ok, it may be something I am doing wrong
     MA: some of your early KS script, you were creating user with 255
	categories, is that fixed
     KW: I fixed that a while ago. I had to hardcode it in since the label
	translation daemon is not running at that point.
     GW: I loaded james level selection on my box, but I could not get the policy
	built.
     JA: obviously the rpm built. the policy bit already got in RH. if you get a
	really recent version from them that should work.
     GW: I grabbed latest rawhide policy Saturday or yesterday, and I used your
	libselinux. when I log in as root it will prompt me. I added this stuff
	to selinux module, sshd and login next to the open
     JA: right
     GW: I also put the debug stuff to tell you what the context is. When I put
	in enforcing, it would kick me out if I try lo login as root or ordinary
	user. I need to look at it and do some analysis. Do you expect people to
	enter an entire context there
     JA: just enter the level
     GW: also enter the translated level
     JA: yes. if you press return without typing anything, then it will get the
	default level
     GW: I need to play with it a bit more, it is not working as it used to in
	the past
     JA: one big difference is level selection with tty. I assume ssh would let
	you do that. I don't think that is the reason it logs you out.
     GW: I need to go see what the denial is for. If I can't get that working,
	I'll catch you on irc maybe
     JA: sure.
     GW: if we get that working, that'll be pretty nice to have. what about
	newrole patch
     MT: I sent out latest patches on the 2nd. It is broken up into smaller more
	readable pieces. The change was adding in the preserve environment
	option using the -p option when you newrole like when you su. That new
	functionality caused better changes in the code. I have not seen any
	replies to that yet, so if anyone on the call can read it, that would be
	excellent. By the way, it looks like the list duplicated my sends, so
	there is only 8 emails, not 16 to read.


PAM, Newrole & VFS polyinstantiation
------------------------------------
     GW: Anything on polyinstantiation. Actually, I am wondering if maybe that is
	what is causing the logout.
     KW: I haven't changed that recently in KS. one thing to watch out with
	polyinstantiation is that it is fragile. you need to make sure the home
	directory has the right level if you change it. if it is at the wrong
	level, it will be messed up and won't be fixed if you log in again
     GW: maybe it's polyinstantiation that messed me up. I need to think about
	that. Also, I was able to kill my system with audit messages with the
	self tests, not sure what caused that.
     LS: I had the same problem.
     MT: I saw that before, I think I had to fix the context of the file it was
	writing to
     LS: It may be that, because I did a relabel and that's when it happened
     SG: in the kernel there is supposed to be a fix that audit doesn't audit
	itself
     GW: I am not clear that is what's happening, is this bug worthy?
     MT: audit gets sent AVC messages, maybe if it is getting avc denial ..well 	
	.. I'll take a look at that
     GW: we'll do more investigation and not open a bug yet unless RH wants that
     SG: it really is a design preference. audit doesn't audit itself, but
	selinux is a different subsystem and it is not aware of that, so it
	might audit the audit system.
     MT: seems like it is going in an infinite loop.
     GW: we'll recreate it and open a bug on it.
     DW: I would think it would kill the audit daemon
     GW: no, it was pretty much alive
     SG: I want to think there is a control that admins can set in the config
	file, let me look at that .. disk_error_action, that might help. it is
	set to suspend for me here
     MT: mine is currently set to single
     SG: I think it would trigger a disk error action
     DW: disk error action will cause AVC, so that is a problem
     KW: KS sets it to single option
     DW: bet the policy does not allow you to drop to single user mode; if so,
	this is a bug.
     SG: need to halt the action, and send an email
     DW: I think it can do that ... Steve, we'll review audit policy tomorrow to
	see it behaves properly
     GW: I want to go read audit daemon pid file, and can't do that as secadm
     DW: you're running at system high?
     GW: I think it is ... we need to test these issues now .. good we are
	hitting this rather than customers
     SG: are you writing this in python, I think you can do get status of audit
	system using lib-audit. you have to have audit capabilities in case
	something fails.
     GW: I'll try that
     SG: I believe it is audit-status
     GW: you think it is reliable?
     SG: The only time it is not reliable is if auditd died due to segfault and
	still didn't tell the kernel that happened, in this case, there is a
	window when it is not accurate
     GW: ok, I'll try that
     SG: that is what pam is doing I think. if pid is 0 then either kernel
	detected no auditd or auditd shut itself down cleanly.
     GW: is there way to say it died badly
     SG: the next time the kernel sends an audit msg it would know. I would think
	when a process dies, kernel would know. It is a matter of connecting
	dots and saying auditd died.
     GW: I think it is sufficient to check it this way since this will be a
	periodic test. let me try that and see how well that works
     MT: I am playing around with python audit and trying to figure out how to 	
	use it. audit_is_enabled is a function that needs one argument, but is
	there documentation on what that needs to be?
     SG: I added man pages, but I am not finished adding that
     DW: semanage uses audit system, so there might be code to look at there.

Audit
------

Print
------
     MA: Now that Eduardo is asking me, I just started going back to look at that
	more. I'll check out those test cases that he brought up.
     DW: policy for range stuff should be out, it just came out today.
     GW: so we should be pulling that policy from rawhide
     DW: yeah, for this one
     SG: general warning, rawhide is starting to diverge from main rhel
     GW: we basically should be getting away from installing from anywhere but
	beta. we need to be clear on what packages to install, like aide
     JA: well, aide in rawhide is controlled by someone else out of RH, so the
	official aide is the one we have with beta
     GW: I am running the one on your page james
     JA: yes that is the correct one
     GW: pam, aide and the kernel are to be updated on top of beta. what about
	the iptables packages?
     SG: i think the one in the 27 beta is the one in the yum repo, the name,
	version and release should be identical. In rhel5 branch, we put the
	patches for iptables.
     GW: ok, great... so any other things we need
     KW: the kickstart script, which will not be available in RH until much
	later.
     GW: if folks know of additional packages bring them up on the list

CIPSO
------
GW: since paul is not here, and I think cipso seems ok we'll skip this now

IPsec
------
     GW: How's ipsec?
     JL: I did testing on the .53 kernel, I ran labeled and unlabeled ipsec.
	everything passed fine, so I'll do that tonight on .54.
     GW: is MLS working ok
     JL: working ok according to the policy. I haven't seen anything that I think
	is incorrect so far, as far as mls is concerned that is
     DG: venkat gave me update, there is patch coming out tomorrow morning. the
	SA selection, and .. those should be out tomorrow
     GW: ok, thanks Darryl. so we need those bits in before we do comprehensive
	testing. do we know when will that be in the kernel, beta or lspp
	kernel.
     SG: Is Eric on the line?
     JL: I have a question, is there a mechanism to toggle accept or reject
	unlabeled packets. when I set labeled ipsec, nothing unlabeled is
	accepted. I know we talked about a toggle option, anyone knows where 	
	that is?
     DG: I am not sure, probably send a message to Venkat on the list.
     JL: Ok, I'll do that
     SG: Back to your question George, we are still able to pull patches to
	kernel. that's still open for us to use. I would like to get out of the
	business of lspp kernels. the pre-requisite is to get development done
	and there are still stuff to be tested, we'll build that and do whatever
	it takes
     GW: so we'll expect one more lspp kernel with venkat's work
     SG: as soon as it looks stable, we'll pull it in
     GW: ok, so on the next kernel .55, we need to really hammer it hard for
	ipsec stuff.
     JL: and I'll send that audit stuff
     GW: how is that going
     JL: good, I'm done, just need to test it.
     SG: one thing to test is turn audit system off and see if audit messages
	still come through. some systems don't check the audit-enabled state
	before they send messages.
     GW: should we compile audit out of the kernel as well
     SG: yes, probably before it goes upstream
     GW: So check audit enabled, audit off, and audit compiled out of kernel
	completely.

Labeled networking stabilization
--------------------------------

xinetd
-------
     GW: word on xinetd
     SG: no
     KW: is there specific examples of how to set sshd with xinetd. I have not
	seen examples on how to configure that.
     GW: have you used sshd
     JL: I have only used sshd ..
     KW: sshd is supposed to break with unlabeled unless we have that fix from
	xinetd.

Self tests
-----------
     GW: Matt has been asking me to release what I have available. I need to do
	something different from how I am checking auditd, but I'll put what I
	have out so people can see it. Matt I'll do that tomorrow rather than
	this evening.
     SG: does the RBAC self test try to do anything with RBAC? do newrole or
	something like that
     GW: no, but it can
     SG: did you come up with a list of actions for it to do to verify it is
	working correctly
     GW: no, it is checking status of selinux and audit now. but we can try to do
	newrole and try to violate the policy
     SG: I think you would want to try to do something not allowed to make sure
	it is not in permissive, other than just checking the mode. Try to crash
	into the wall to make sure the access mechanism is working regardless of
	what the status says
     GW: I can try that, anything else to try
     SG: I think you would want to change role for something you can and can't
	change into
     GW: ok
     SG: something else I was curious about. In Security Target (ST) do you talk
	about "pie" randomization
     KW: if selinux adds restrictions on binaries, then it should be configurable
     SG: ok, just curious if you made claims about it or not. if you did, I am
	thinking there might be enhancements to amtu, but if you didn't make any
	claims, then don't worry about it

Cron, tmpwatch, mail, etc.
---------------------------
     JA: I made some changes for cron to do the range checking and spoke with
	Dan. I made the /etc/context contain security check. I think that is
	roughly ready to go. I'll do some more testing and send to Dan for
	approval.
     GW: so that's another package we want to pick up early before it goes to
	beta, so we can test on
     JA: right, what I wanted to point out earlier is to not get packages from
	rawhide since they are maintained by others.
     MA: so there is no plan to incorporate your changes in fedora extra packages
     JA: ...
     SG: upstream might be thinking to do a release candidate. Maybe we should
	submit that man page change to them
     MA: I can submit that to them ..
     SG: if you do that today or tomorrow, it will probably go in same release
     MA: that reminds me I owe you a man page for cups.
     GW: anything else we need to bring up?
     SG: yes, Matt we were talking about changing runlevel and if that needed to
	be an audit event
     GW: I thought we decided it didn't need to be an audit event
     MA: I think your reasoning george was that when runlevel changes, you said
	audit would log a shutdown so that was sufficient.
     GW: right, do you agree with that klaus? that we don't need audit msg for
	run level changes
     KW: it think the rationale was that users are not allowed to change run
	level
     GW: ok, that's a  more clearer answer
     KW: that's what it has been before, we never supported changing run levels
	during operations
     SG: ok, I just wanted to know it concluded
     MA: would be nice to have init show audit record for that, but it is not
	required, especially this late in evaluation
     GW: I agree, it would be nice to have. Ok, anything else? thanks everyone,
	let's adjourn.

Bugs / remaining tasks
----------------------

Final cutoff date
------------------




More information about the redhat-lspp mailing list