[PATCHv16 08/13] DocBook/media: add CEC documentation

Mauro Carvalho Chehab mchehab at s-opensource.com
Fri Jun 17 11:37:38 UTC 2016 

Em Fri, 17 Jun 2016 13:09:10 +0200
Hans Verkuil <hverkuil at xs4all.nl> escreveu:

> On 06/17/2016 11:50 AM, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> >>>> +	  <row>
> >>>> +	    <entry><constant>CEC_MODE_MONITOR</constant></entry>
> >>>> +	    <entry>0xe0</entry>
> >>>> +	    <entry>Put the file descriptor into monitor mode. Can only be used in combination
> >>>> +	    with <constant>CEC_MODE_NO_INITIATOR</constant>, otherwise &EINVAL; will be
> >>>> +	    returned. In monitor mode all messages this CEC device transmits and all messages
> >>>> +	    it receives (both broadcast messages and directed messages for one its logical
> >>>> +	    addresses) will be reported. This is very useful for debugging.</entry>
> >>>> +	  </row>
> >>>> +	  <row>
> >>>> +	    <entry><constant>CEC_MODE_MONITOR_ALL</constant></entry>
> >>>> +	    <entry>0xf0</entry>
> >>>> +	    <entry>Put the file descriptor into 'monitor all' mode. Can only be used in combination
> >>>> +            with <constant>CEC_MODE_NO_INITIATOR</constant>, otherwise &EINVAL; will be
> >>>> +            returned. In 'monitor all' mode all messages this CEC device transmits and all messages
> >>>> +            it receives, including directed messages for other CEC devices will be reported. This
> >>>> +	    is very useful for debugging, but not all devices support this. This mode requires that
> >>>> +	    the <constant>CEC_CAP_MONITOR_ALL</constant> capability is set, and depending on the
> >>>> +	    hardware, you may have to be root to select this mode.</entry>  
> >>>
> >>> Please mention the error codes when it fails.  
> >>
> >> Ack.
> >>
> >>> "and depending on the hardware, you may have to be root to select this mode."
> >>>
> >>> No. We should define if CAP_SYS_ADMIN (or maybe CAP_NET_ADMIN, with
> >>> is required to set promiscuous mode for network) will be required or
> >>> not and enforce it for all hardware.  
> >>
> >> Ack for CAP_SYS_ADMIN (or possible NET_ADMIN, I'll look into that).
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> >>> IMHO, putting the device into monitor mode should require it.  
> >>
> >> No. The CEC 2.0 spec explicitly recommends that the CEC adapter should be able to
> >> monitor all messages.
> > 
> > What the hardware should or should not do is one thing. The other
> > thing is what permissions are needed in order to use such
> > feature.
> > 
> > I don't doubt that a similar requirement exists on 802.x, or on some
> > industry standard document requiring that all Ethernet hardware should 
> > support promiscuous mode. Yet, for security reasons, enabling such feature 
> > requires special caps on Linux.
> > 
> >> The problem is that 1) not all hardware supports this, and 2)
> >> hardware that does support this tends to mention that it is for testing only and
> >> it shouldn't be used otherwise.
> >>
> >> If the hardware is fine with allowing monitoring of all messages, then anyone
> >> should be able to do that. 
> > 
> > Why?
> 
> The spec recommends that this is supported in order for applications to take advantage
> of seeing such traffic to optimize their performance (i.e. by sniffing traffic you can see which
> devices are there so you don't have to discover them). The underlying reason is that
> the CEC bus is so hopelessly slow, so any mechanism that helps avoids having to use
> the bus is good.
> 
> From the HDMI 2.0 spec (section 11.4):
> 
> "Polling can and should be skipped if other CEC traffic shows that a device is present.
>  Hence, a device should not poll a certain Logical Address within at least one Minimum
>  Polling Period after the following CEC events occur between the device that is polling
>  and the device whose Logical Address is to be polled:
> 
>  - A directly addressed message, sent to that Logical Address, was acknowledged.
>  - A directly addressed message has been sent from that Logical Address.
>  - A broadcast message has been sent from that Logical Address.
> 
>  It is recommended that, if the device is capable of monitoring CEC traffic directed to
>  other devices, then this capability should also be used to further reduce the need for polling.
>  In this case, such a device should not poll a certain Logical Address for at least one
>  Minimum Polling Period after it detects that that Logical Address acknowledged a directed
>  message initiated from any Logical Address, or any message was sent from that Logical Address."
> 
> I wouldn't have required CAP_*_ADMIN at all if it wasn't for the scary language in some of the
> hardware specs that I have seen.
> 
> (see below before replying to this :-) )
> 
> > 
> >> But if it comes with all these 'for testing only' caveats,
> >> then I think it should should be protected against 'casual' use. Unfortunately they
> >> never tell you why it should be used for testing only (overly cautious or could
> >> something actually fail when in this mode?).
> >>
> >> The reality is that being able to monitor the CEC bus is extremely useful when debugging.
> > 
> > Well, it can be debugged as root. That's not an issue. The issue
> > here is if sniffing the traffic by a normal user could leak
> > something that should not usually be seen by a normal user, like
> > a Netflix password, that was typed via the RC, for example.
> 
> Interesting example. I hadn't thought of that.
> 
> OK, so I'm going to change the code so CAP_SYS/NET_ADMIN is required for the
> monitoring mode. It can always be relaxed later, but this password sniffing
> example is quite convincing actually.
> 
> The HDMI 2.0 polling recommendation can still be met since this would be handled
> in the CEC framework (not implemented today, but it is planned since it is fairly
> easy to do so). Since that's all inside the kernel nothing is leaked to non-root
> applications.

Ok, makes sense to me.

> One area where I am uncertain is when remote control messages are received and
> passed on by the framework to the RC input device.
> 
> Suppose the application is the one receiving a password, then that password appears
> both in the input device and the cec device. What I think will be useful is if the
> application can prevent the use of an input device to pass on remote control messages.
> 
> CEC_ADAP_S_LOG_ADDRS has a flags field that I intended for just that purpose.
> 
> Note that RC messages are always passed on to CEC followers even if there is an
> input device since some RC messages have additional arguments that the rc subsystem
> can't handle. Also I think that it is often easier to handle all messages from the
> same CEC device instead of having to read from two devices (cec and input). I
> actually considered removing the input support, but it turned out to be useful in
> existing video streaming apps since they don't need to add special cec support to
> handle remote control presses.
> 
> Question: is there a way for applications to get exclusive access to an input device?
> Or can anyone always read from it?

That's a very good question. I did a quick test to check how this is
currently protected, by running:

$ strace ir-keytable -t
...
open("/dev/input/event12", O_RDONLY)    = -1 EACCES (Permission denied)
...

It turns that the input device was created by udev with those
permissions:

crw-rw---- 1 root input 13, 76 Jun 17 08:26 /dev/input/event12

Changing access to 666 allowed to run ir-keytable -t without the
need of being root.

Yet, maybe there's a way to get exclusive access to input/event
device, but I never needed to go that deep at the input subsystem.
Maybe Dmitry could shed some light on that. Adding him in the loop.

> So I am thinking that I add a flag to inhibit the use of the input device if set.

There are two different situations here:

1) if the code is originated by the machine (e. g. what LIRC calls
TX mode), I don't see any reason to inhibit it by a normal user that
has permission to use the device node;

2) if the Linux machine is receiving RC events via CEC (the "RX"
mode - with is what the RC event devices implement nowadays), then
the user needs to have permission to read from the evdev. Yeah,
we need to have a way to protect passwords typed on IR. So, some
sort of way to inhibit it is needed.

> This would be in a follow-on patch and it's added to the TODO file in the initial
> patch series.

Ok.

> Comments?
> 
> >> The simple MONITOR mode is different in that it requires no special hardware configuration.
> >> But it won't be able to see directed messages between CEC devices other than us.
> >>
> >> On a related note: if an application tries to become initiator or follower and someone
> >> else has already exclusive access, then EBUSY is returned. I based this on what happens
> >> in V4L2 with the S_PRIORITY ioctl.
> >>
> >> However, I think EACCES is a much better error code. It's probably what S_PRIO should
> >> have used as well.
> >>
> >> Do you agree?
> > 
> > Not really. EACCES sounds more like a permanent problem, while EBUSY
> > is always a temporary issue.
> > 
> > The problem with EACESS is that the user may think that the file
> > permissions at the /dev/cec? are wrong.
> 
> Hmm, OK. I'm not entirely convinced, but I don't think it is a big deal either.
> 
> Besides, now I don't need to change anything :-)

OK.

> 
> Regards,
> 
> 	Hans



Thanks,
Mauro

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