Re: [PATCH v12] GSSAPI encryption support - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Michael Paquier <michael.paquier@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 5:58 AM, Robbie Harwood <rharwood@redhat.com> wrote:
>> Robbie Harwood <rharwood@redhat.com> writes:
>
> Sorry for my late reply.

Thanks for the feedback!

>>> If I were to continue as I have been - using the plaintext connection
>>> and auth negotiation path - then at the time of startup the client has
>>> no way of knowing whether to send connection parameters or not.
>>> Personally, I would be in favor of not frontloading these connection
>>> parameters over insecure connections, but it is my impression that the
>>> project does not want to go this way (which is fine).
>
> Per the discussion upthread I got the opposite impression, the startup
> packet should be sent after the connection has been established. SSL
> does so: the SSL negotiation goes first, and then the startup packet
> is sent. That's the flow with the status changing from
> CONNECTION_SSL_START -> CONNECTION_MADE.

We are in agreement, I think.  I have structured the referenced
paragraph badly: for this design, I'm suggesting separate GSS startup
path (like SSL) and once a tunnel is established we send the startup
packet.  I probably should have just left this paragraph out.

>>> On the server, I'll need to implement `hostgss` (by analogy to
>>> `hostssl`), and we'll want to lock authentication on those connections
>>> to GSSAPI-only.
>
> As well as hostnogss, but I guess that's part of the plan.

Sure, `hostnogss` should be fine.  This isn't quadratic, right?  We don't
need hostnogssnossl (or thereabouts)?

>>> Clients will explicitly probe for GSSAPI support as they do for TLS
>>> support (I look forward to the bikeshed on the order of these) and
>>> should have a parameter to require said support.  One thing I'm not
>>> clear on is what our behavior should be when the user doesn't
>>> explicitly request GSSAPI and doesn't have a ccache - do we prompt?
>>> Skip probing?  I'm not sure what the best option there is.
>
> I am not sure I get what you mean here.

Okay.  Let me try again:

So there's a connection setting `sslmode` that we'll want something
similar to here (`gssapimode` or so).  `sslmode` has six settings, but I
think we only need three for GSSAPI: "disable", "allow", and "prefer"
(which presumably would be the default).

Lets suppose we're working with "prefer".  GSSAPI will itself check two
places for credentials: client keytab and ccache.  But if we don't find
credentials there, we as the client have two options on how to proceed.

- First, we could prompt for a password (and then call gss_acquire_cred_with_password() to get credentials), presumably
withan empty password meaning to skip GSSAPI.  My memory is that the current behavior for GSSAPI auth-only is to prompt
forpassword if we don't find credentials (and if it isn't, there's no reason not to unless we're opposed to handling
thepassword).
 

- Second, we could skip GSSAPI and proceed with the next connection method.  This might be confusing if the user is
thenprompted for a password and expects it to be for GSSAPI, but we could probably make it sensible.  I think I prefer
thefirst option.
 

Thanks,
--Robbie