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SystemD Mounts EFI pseudo-fs RW, Facilitates Permanently Bricking Laptops, Closes Bug Invalid

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday February 09 2016, @02:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the why-oh-why dept.

linuxrocks123 writes:

A number of users have reported that running "rm --no-preserve-root -rf /" not only deletes all their files (as expected), but also permanently bricks their computers (which is not). Tracing the issue revealed that the ultimate cause was that SystemD mounted the EFI pseudo-fs as read-write even when this FS was not listed in fstab, and deleting certain files in this pseudo-fs causes certain buggy, but very common, firmware not to POST anymore. A user reported this bug on SystemD's GitHub issue tracker, asking that the FS be mounted read-only instead of read-write, and said bug was immediately closed as invalid. The comment thread for the bug was locked shortly after. Discuss.

Links:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/2402
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/02/01/running-a-single-delete-command-can-permanently-brick-laptops-from-inside-linux/

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by mechanicjay on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:02AM

    by mechanicjay (7) <reversethis-{gro ... a} {yajcinahcem}> on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:02AM (#301311) Homepage Journal

    Yeah us too, we're running fast as we can, our RHEL Site Licence expires June 30, we're not renewing. A guy in my group wrote a script which converts a RHEL 7 box to a Centos7 Box. Just needs a singe reboot to load the new kernel and whatnot. It's flipping magic.

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  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:24AM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:24AM (#301317) Journal

    That's a very cool idea. How much work was it? Can he publish it somewhere?

  • (Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:52AM

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday February 09 2016, @10:52AM (#301329) Journal

    What's the betting they try to extinguish CentOS next? I foresee an army of lawyers descending.
     

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 09 2016, @02:56PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Tuesday February 09 2016, @02:56PM (#301437)

      I thought they were already "in charge of" CentOS?

      In January 2014, Red Hat announced that it would sponsor the CentOS project, "helping to establish a platform well-suited to the needs of open source developers that integrate technologies in and around the operating system".[16] As the result of these changes, ownership of CentOS trademarks was transferred to Red Hat,[17] which now employs most of the CentOS head developers; however, they work as part of the Red Hat's Open Source and Standards team, which operates separately from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux team.[7] A new CentOS governing board was also established.[8]

      (wiki [wikipedia.org])

      Can't say I understood that when I heard it happened but it's quite possible I'm misunderstanding.

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