[Rust-VMM] Call for GSoC and Outreachy project ideas for summer 2022

Stefan Hajnoczi stefanha at gmail.com
Wed Mar 16 13:16:24 UTC 2022


On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 at 13:58, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 9 Feb 2022 at 14:50, Alexander Graf <graf at amazon.com> wrote:
> > On 28.01.22 16:47, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> > > Dear QEMU, KVM, and rust-vmm communities,
> > > QEMU will apply for Google Summer of Code 2022
> > > (https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/) and has been accepted into
> > > Outreachy May-August 2022 (https://www.outreachy.org/). You can now
> > > submit internship project ideas for QEMU, KVM, and rust-vmm!
> > >
> > > If you have experience contributing to QEMU, KVM, or rust-vmm you can
> > > be a mentor. It's a great way to give back and you get to work with
> > > people who are just starting out in open source.
> > >
> > > Please reply to this email by February 21st with your project ideas.
> > >
> > > Good project ideas are suitable for remote work by a competent
> > > programmer who is not yet familiar with the codebase. In
> > > addition, they are:
> > > - Well-defined - the scope is clear
> > > - Self-contained - there are few dependencies
> > > - Uncontroversial - they are acceptable to the community
> > > - Incremental - they produce deliverables along the way
> > >
> > > Feel free to post ideas even if you are unable to mentor the project.
> > > It doesn't hurt to share the idea!
> >
> >
> > I have one that I'd absolutely *love* to see but not gotten around
> > implementing myself yet :)
> >
> >
> > Summary:
> >
> > Implement -M nitro-enclave in QEMU
> >
> > Nitro Enclaves are the first widely adopted implementation of hypervisor
> > assisted compute isolation. Similar to technologies like SGX, it allows
> > to spawn a separate context that is inaccessible by the parent Operating
> > System. This is implemented by "giving up" resources of the parent VM
> > (CPU cores, memory) to the hypervisor which then spawns a second vmm to
> > execute a completely separate virtual machine. That new VM only has a
> > vsock communication channel to the parent and has a built-in lightweight
> > TPM.
> >
> > One big challenge with Nitro Enclaves is that due to its roots in
> > security, there are very few debugging / introspection capabilities.
> > That makes OS bringup, debugging and bootstrapping very difficult.
> > Having a local dev&test environment that looks like an Enclave, but is
> > 100% controlled by the developer and introspectable would make life a
> > lot easier for everyone working on them. It also may pave the way to see
> > Nitro Enclaves adopted in VM environments outside of EC2.
> >
> > This project will consist of adding a new machine model to QEMU that
> > mimics a Nitro Enclave environment, including the lightweight TPM, the
> > vsock communication channel and building firmware which loads the
> > special "EIF" file format which contains kernel, initramfs and metadata
> > from a -kernel image.
> >
> > Links:
> >
> > https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/nitro/nitro-enclaves/
> > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200921121732.44291-10-andraprs@amazon.com/T/
> >
> > Details:
> >
> > Skill level: intermediate - advanced (some understanding of QEMU machine
> > modeling would be good)
> > Language: C
> > Mentor: Maybe me (Alexander Graf), depends on timelines and holiday
> > season. Let's find an intern first - I promise to find a mentor then :)
> > Suggested by: Alexander Graf
> >
> >
> > Note: I don't know enough about rust-vmm's debugging capabilities. If it
> > has gdbstub and a local UART that's easily usable, the project might be
> > perfectly viable under its umbrella as well - written in Rust then of
> > course.
>
> It would be great to have an open source Enclave environment for
> development and testing in QEMU.
>
> Could you add a little more detail about the tasks involved. Something
> along the lines of:
> - Implement a device model for the TPM device (link to spec or driver
> code below)
> - Implement vsock device (or is this virtio-mmio vsock?)
> - Add a test for the TPM device
> - Add an acceptance test that boots a minimal EIF payload
>
> This will give candidates more keywords and links to research this project.

Hi Alex,
Would you like me to add this project idea to the list? Please see
what I wrote above about adding details about the tasks involved.

Thanks,
Stefan



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