Who needs it?

Fedora Silverblue users with SecureBoot enabled and akmods such as akmod-nvidia or akmod-VirtualBox.

What is akmods-keys?

akmods-keys provides my solution for Issue 499 (Issue 272) on Fedora Silverblue (and its variants, such as Kinoite).

On Fedora Workstation, akmods signs the kernel modules it creates in its %post operation.

On Fedora Silverblue, the signing does not work because the keys, which are typically stored in /etc/pki/akmods/{certs,private}, are not accessible.

akmods-keys solves this issue with @travier's idea.

How does it work?

Basic idea:

• We create a local package akmods-keys that provides these keys in /etc/pki/akmods-keys/{certs,private}.
• We let the original akmods use them, but with the configuration in /etc/rpm/macros.kmodtool that points to our keys in akmods-keys.

How to

.. use this project?

### Requirements ###
rpm-ostree install --apply-live rpmdevtools akmods

### Install your Machine Owner Key (MOK) ###
sudo kmodgenca
sudo mokutil --import /etc/pki/akmods/certs/public_key.der

## Clone this project
git clone https://github.com/CheariX/silverblue-akmods-keys
cd silverblue-akmods-keys

### Build akmods-keys
sudo bash setup.sh
rpm-ostree install akmods-keys-0.0.2-8.fc$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Note: setup.sh is very rudimentary. Please check before using.

.. install modules?

I tested it with

rpm-ostree install akmod-nvidia akmod-VirtualBox

The modules are automatically signed.

Quriks

Some notes to myself :)

Check if the module is signed

OSTrees are located in /sysroot/ostree/deploy/fedora/deploy/.

This fish command was handy for me to find out whether akmods signed a module after an rpm-ostree operation without rebooting the system.

modinfo -F signature /sysroot/ostree/deploy/fedora/deploy/(rpm-ostree status --json | jq -r ".deployments[0].checksum").0/usr/lib/modules/*/extra/nvidia*/nvidia.ko.xz

Change (rpm-ostree... to $(rpm-ostree for bash compatiblity.

FAQ

What is the status of this project?

It works for me. Hopefully also for you. I did not do any deep testing with it.

Why do you use /etc/pki/akmods-keys in contrast to /etc/pki/akmods?

To be honest, this was the first solution that worked for me. Maybe they could also be placed in /etc/pki/akmods, but I thought it would be a good idea to have a unique place that does not lead to conflicts.

Are the keys readable by regular users?

I checked the key location in

ls -al /sysroot/ostree/deploy/fedora/deploy/(rpm-ostree status --json | jq ".deployments[0].checksum" | sed 's/"//g').0/etc/pki/akmods-keys/{certs,private}
Permission denied (os error 13)

They seem to be readable by root only. However, I'd recommend deleting the akmods-keys-0.0.2-8.fc36.noarch.rpm file.

Is this the final solution?

No. It is still a work-around, although it works pretty well (at least for me).

According to @travier, the ideal solution would be (fedora-silverblue/issue-tracker#272 (comment)):

The only potential fix that I'm aware of would be to store those keys into the kernel keyring and then request them while building the module during the rpm-ostree transaction.

This is something that akmods-keys cannot accomplish (or at least I don't know how), and Fedora Silverblue would have to adopt. Any further development/investigation should be moved to the CoreOS issue: coreos/rpm-ostree#3885

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to @nelsonaloysio for all the help with signed modules, akmods and for showing me how to create RPM spec files and build them.
• Thanks to @travier. Actually, he described exactly this solution in his first answer, but I was unable to understand it. His further answers help me to do so.
• Thanks to @NVieville for the idea with /etc/rpm/macros/macros.kmodtool