Re: [Qemu-devel] storing machine data in qcow images?

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Thu, Jun 07, 2018 at 01:17:24PM +0200, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> On Thu, 2018-06-07 at 11:22 +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 07, 2018 at 12:02:29PM +0200, Andrea Bolognani wrote:
> > > While hints might be considered a reasonable fit for qcow2, I think
> > > it's pretty hard to argue for embedding the NVRAM file in there,
> > > which to me signals quite clearly that an archive containing the
> > > disk image(s) *and* the configuration hints *and* other ancillary
> > > files such as the NVRAM is the only way to build a solution that's
> > > not dead on arrival.
> > 
> > On a similar theme, I can imagine users wanting to provide a TPM
> > data blob too, and for AMD SEV we'd need to be able to provide a
> > DH key, and session blob too IIUC.
> 
> I'm not familiar with the technologies you're talking about, but
> all that sounds like something very security sensitive and not
> something eg. the Fedora project would want to bake into their
> cloud images.
> 
> Perhaps we should keep in mind that this kind of archive format
> lends itself quite naturally to both generic ready-made images and
> custom, fully configured images: in the former case it would only
> contain the few things mentione above, while in the latter it might
> also have security sensitive data that's specific to the deployment
> it's going to be used against.

I don't thonk there's any such distinction. A downstream user
may build generic ready-made images, or fully configured app
specific images. Both can contain the security sensitive data.

Regards,
Daniel
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