Bug 1376983

Summary: [anaconda] password protection of system boot options unavailable
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Joachim Frieben <jfrieben>
Component: anacondaAssignee: Anaconda Maintenance Team <anaconda-maint-list>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 28CC: anaconda-maint-list, g.kaviyarasu, jonathan, mkolman, vanmeeuwen+fedora, vponcova
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Reopened
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Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2019-05-28 23:40:31 UTC Type: Bug
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Joachim Frieben 2016-09-17 07:21:59 UTC
Description of problem:
Unlike in previous Fedora releases featuring grub 0.9x, recent releases of Fedora do not provide a means of protecting system boot options with a password specified during installing the system.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
anaconda-25.20.1-1.fc25

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Fedora 25 using a recent install media.

Actual results:
At no point, the installer allows the user to add password protection for the system boot options.

Expected results:
Like in previous releases featuring grub 0.9x, a password for protecting the system boot options can be specified.

Additional info:
Since password protection for the system boot options can be set up for an installed system following official Fedora documentation material, no technical reason appears to prohibit anaconda from incorporating this security measure.
From a user's point of view, password protection of the system boot options looks like a fundamental security feature. The lack of this feature implies that the present default password protection of run-level 1 is absolutely useless.

Comment 1 Fedora End Of Life 2017-12-12 10:11:20 UTC
Fedora 25 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2017-12-12. Fedora 25 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

Comment 2 Joachim Frieben 2018-03-06 08:37:28 UTC
Issue is still present for all of Fedora 26, 27, and 28.

Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2018-05-03 08:28:31 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 26 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 26. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora  'version'
of '26'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version'
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not
able to fix it before Fedora 26 is end of life. If you would still like
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 4 Vendula Poncova 2018-05-14 11:00:26 UTC
Hi, I think that you can set up the password in a kickstart file with the --password option of the bootloader command. See: http://pykickstart.readthedocs.io/en/latest/kickstart-docs.html#bootloader

Comment 5 Joachim Frieben 2018-05-15 08:21:18 UTC
(In reply to Vendula Poncova from comment #4)
Before moving to GRUB2, the graphical installer offered the hard-to-overlook possibility to enable a password protection for GRUB and to set the corresponding password. The suggested workaround is rather suitable for "experts". Normal users may not even realize that the omission of a boot-loader password leaves their system vulnerable to intrusion by persons who have physical access to their system. Moreover, customizing a kickstart file is certainly more complicated than simply setting a boot-load password after finishing the install procedure.

Comment 6 Ben Cotton 2018-11-27 15:42:28 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 27 is nearing its end of life.
On 2018-Nov-30  Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for
Fedora 27. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases
that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as
EOL if it remains open with a Fedora  'version' of '27'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 27 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 7 Ben Cotton 2018-11-30 21:36:41 UTC
Fedora 27 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2018-11-30. Fedora 27 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

Comment 8 Joachim Frieben 2019-02-14 20:35:06 UTC
Issue is still present for all of Fedora 28, 29, and 30 (Rawhide).

Comment 9 Ben Cotton 2019-05-02 19:54:08 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 28 is nearing its end of life.
On 2019-May-28 Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for
Fedora 28. It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases
that are no longer maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as
EOL if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '28'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 28 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 10 Ben Cotton 2019-05-28 23:40:31 UTC
Fedora 28 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2019-05-28. Fedora 28 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.

Comment 11 Vendula Poncova 2019-09-17 13:12:52 UTC
Hi Joachim, we are not going to implement this feature in the current UI. The password is supported only by GRUB, so the UI element would have to be disabled for other types of bootloaders. Usually, we are trying to avoid this kind of UI elements, because it is difficult to test them and the code is prone to errors. The current UI design also doesn't provide a good place for bootloader-specific options like this one.