Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2018 17:46:10 +0100 From: Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson@gmail.com> To: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> Cc: Freebsd fs <freebsd-fs@freebsd.org>, FreeBSD-scsi <freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: smartmontools and kern.securelevel Message-ID: <4C1D44AF-8247-4601-A39C-A8C0A5C8CBD8@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfo4PZv7ueCZUZ_bnPu26mL12HAUzfoszhXeDkrTShV6zA@mail.gmail.com> References: <0985ABD3-D141-4EE2-B1B3-3016B16E2B68@gmail.com> <CANCZdfo4PZv7ueCZUZ_bnPu26mL12HAUzfoszhXeDkrTShV6zA@mail.gmail.com>
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On 23 Feb 2018, Warner Losh wrote: > On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 8:20 AM, Ben RUBSON <ben.rubson@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> I run smartmontools on my storage servers, to launch periodic disk tests >> and alert on disk errors. >> >> Unfortunately, if we set sysctl kern.securelevel >=2, smartmontools does >> not work anymore. >> Certainly because it needs to write directly to raw devices. >> (details of the levels, -1 to 3, in security(7)) >> >> Any workaround to this ? >> >> Perhaps we could think about allowing SMART commands to be written to >> disks when sysctl kern.securelevel >=2 ? >> (I assume smartmontools writes SMART commands) > > Sending raw disks commands is inherently insecure. It's hard to create a > list of those commands that are OK because of the complexity and > diversity of the needed functionality. That complexity also makes it hard > to put the commands into a series of ioctls which could be made more > secure. Thank you for your feedback Warner. Can't all SMART commands be easily identified among the others ? (when a command arrives, does kernel sees it is SMART flagged ?) Perhaps you assume some SMART commands may be dangerous for the disks' data itself ? Thank you again, Ben
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