John Dennis wrote:
I've been fixing a bug in the web UI when we retrieve a certificate. The
data that's displayed cannot be copied and used with any other
certificate (i.e. x509) software, openssl and NSS being prime examples.
The crux of the problem is it's not in a standard format. There are 2
standard formats for certificates, DER if it's binary and PEM if it text.
What the web UI was outputting was bare base64 encoding of DER data
(closely related to PEM, but not PEM). We've used bare base64 data in a
number of places and have gradually fixed a number of them over time.
The use of bare base64 all goes back to the dawn of IPA and how
certificate data is stored in LDAP (binary DER) and how binary data
passes through our RPC mechanism. The early limitations of handling
certificate data got "institutionalized" in IPA and we got used to using
the non-standard bare base64 form, not because it's correct but because
of deficiencies in other parts of the code which are now fixed.
The fact is nobody else uses this format, it's completely non-standard.
As part of the bug fix I'm working on (certificate output in PEM format
rather than bare base64) I would also like to clean up the parts of the
code in both the web UI and the command line which accept certificate
data as bare base64 and change them so they only accept PEM. In fact as
it stands now if you paste PEM into the web UI things will fail. The
command line interface writes PEM data and accepts either PEM or bare
base64. Currently the web UI outputs bare base64 and accepts bare
base64. After my bug fix the web UI will output PEM but would still
require bare base64 as input (if I don't fix that as well). These weird
inconsistencies aren't good IMHO.
ldapsearch returns raw certificate data as well and this is what the IPA
tools were modeled on, so this is not unprecedented.
PEM is just base64 with line limits, carriage returns and a
header/footer. Try passing that in as dashed argument and you'll see why
we allow it to be passed in as a single base64 blob (and even that is
rather awful).
I'd like us to adopt the convention that we only ever input and output
certificates (and CSR's) in either PEM or DER formats (and PKCS12 in
specific cases). This matches what both openssl and NSS does and just
about every other piece of software I'm familiar with. In practical
terms for the near term it would mean we just support PEM, if we want to
add DER support later we can, it won't be hard, but we need to stop
accepting bare base64 data and insist on standard PEM.
Considering that you can't pass binary data via XML-RPC you'd have to
base64 encode it anyway...
This would be a change to the interface. More importantly it's a change
somewhat late in the game just prior to a major release. But the
consistency and adherence to standards warrant the change, not to
mention we probably don't want version 2 of IPA to go out the door this
way. It would train people with bad habits, frustrate them, and we would
regret having to support it down the road.
Changing the meaning of arguments is not allowed at this point. Input of
certificates is not something a typical user will do, they will manage
certificates via the cert API. We just as a policy try not to hide
functionality so updating certificates is exposed like everything else is.
Importing and exporting certs via the web UI and command line are not
common operations. The only significant impact changing to requiring PEM
input would be on our automated tests which would have to make sure they
supplied PEM format.
Comments? Questions?
If I don't hear a major outcry I'm going to proceed with making the
import and export of certs be PEM only for 100% consistency across the
board (it would be weird if you couldn't paste the cert data into the
web UI which you copied from the web UI).
I'm fine with display of it as PEM and accepting it as PEM but I think
disallowing an input form that has been there for so long is bad.
rob
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