FS#74586 - [virtualbox-host-modules-arch] [virtualbox-host-dkms] Don't load modules at boot by default?

Attached to Project: Community Packages
Opened by Neven Sajko (Neven) - Friday, 29 April 2022, 10:32 GMT
Last edited by Buggy McBugFace (bugbot) - Saturday, 25 November 2023, 20:03 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages
Status Closed
Assigned To Christian Hesse (eworm)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

Currently the PKGBUILDs put .conf files in /usr/lib/modules-load.d to make the vbox out-of-tree modules load at boot. As the three modules didn't make it into the Linux kernel project, loading them by default seems quite suspect from system integrity and security perspectives. Because loading random kernel modules seems like it could crash my system or make it more pwnable, these don't seem like sane defaults.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Buggy McBugFace (bugbot)
Saturday, 25 November 2023, 20:03 GMT
Reason for closing:  Moved
Additional comments about closing:  https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/p ackaging/packages/virtualbox-host-module s-arch/issues/1
Comment by Neven Sajko (Neven) - Saturday, 30 April 2022, 14:47 GMT
Another reason to not load the vbox modules by default is that loading out-of-tree modules taints the kernel (see dmesg). This means that when a kernel bug (unrelated to vbox) manifests, extra work (prevent the vbox modules from loading and reboot) is necessary to debug.

See https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.html

> bug reports from tainted kernels will often be ignored by developers, hence try to reproduce problems with an untainted kernel

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