Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:43:39 -0400
From: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com>
To: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>,
       Jan Harkes <jaharkes@cs.cmu.edu>,
       "Press, Jonathan" <Jonathan.Press@ca.com>, peterz@infradead.org,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, malware-list@lists.printk.net,
       hch@infradead.org, andi@firstfloor.org, viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk
Subject: Re: [malware-list] TALPA - a threat model?  well sorta.
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On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:33:13 +0100
Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

> > I could probably buy that, but I don't know how an HSM would work.
> > Would we have everything we need at open for them to fire off?
> > 
> > /me is HSM clueless and trying to include their needs is proving a
> > challenge.
> 
> So don't bother. Its a theoretical use for the most part so we can
> mangle the interface later. 

Think of a consumer HSM application: backup to rsync.net
or Amazon S3.

Instead of waiting for the whole backup to be restored,
you can start using the filesystem immediately.  The 
block-on-open hook can be used by the restore program
to fetch files from the remote backup site on an
as-needed basis, with a full restore going on in the
background.

If the block-on-open hook can be used for that (even
with additional magic, like creating empty HSM inodes
with a special attr to notify "the data lives elsewhere"),
HSM should be good.

The "data lives elsewhere" bit/xattr/whatever could also
be used on directories, so not even the whole directory
tree would have to be restored right on restore :)

-- 
All rights reversed.
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