[Qemu-devel] Emulation of TCG OPAL self-encrypting drive

[David Kozub]

Hi,

Can QEMU emulate an OPAL disk? The only relevant thing I found is a post 
from 2017 about TPM that mentions OPAL:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-07/msg04586.html

specifically this bit:

> Well, at some point somebody's going to want us to implement this,
> but... they can do that when they do that.

So I assume it is not implemented. (?)

I agree with the sentiment expressed in the mail linked above w.r.t. OPAL 
security. I'm interested in this from SW development/debugging/fiddling 
perspective. A sufficient solution for me would not add any real 
encryption but would respond to the various OPAL commands send via ATA 
TRUSTED SEND/RECEIVE commands.

In fact, a more generic solution would work for me: If it was possible to 
send ATA commands from QEMU to a separate process which could then handle 
them as it liked and reply back to QEMU. This could be useful for other 
fiddling/debugging situations too.

Or, just a pass-through to a block device in the host - but a pass-through 
that would allow OPAL commands.

I'm grateful for any hints/ideas. Perhaps something like this is already 
possible with QEMU?

Best regards,
David