sdwdate can cause system time to jump backwards causing issue with kloak freezing the keyboard

Support
1

The keyboard freezes a bit. Is it possible to remove friezes?

2
  • Look up what kloak is.
  • Try disabling kloak.
  • See if that helps.
  • If it helps, work with upstream to fix the bug.
3

I probably won’t disable this feature. Because it adds anonymity.

4

You can test this offline in an text editor without anonymity risk.

5

But when disabled in a text editor, it will also be disabled in the browser. I think this thing should not be disabled. I’m ready to endure these little friezes.

6

This may have been reported before but a cursory search did not yield any results.

At boot of Whonix-Workstation sdwdate attempts sync of system time. If the VM is interacted with by keyboard while sdwdate is setting the system time and it jumps backwards kloak will repeat the previously recorded input indefinitely.

7

Great report! I experienced this bug sometimes but could never explain how to reproduce it.

8

Reproduction is trivial. Just run the following script as root and attempt to type.

#!/bin/bash

while true
do
	date --set @$((`date +%s` - 20))
	sleep 5
done

The escape sequence for Kloak (RShift+LShift+Esc) also works to restart kloak in this state.

2 Likes
9

Found the root cause and potential solutions, and recorded them in the Github report @Patrick linked to. (Don’t have permission to post links yet so I can’t give a direct link.) tl;dr: kloak should be using a monotonic timer if possible, if that’s undesirable there are ways to take into account a system time change that goes backwards.

1 Like
10

Link posting now possible. (Posting Links for New Users)

11

Fixed in Whonix 17.2.3.7 - Point Release!.

1 Like