Systemtap Client/server Certificate Management and Usage Improvements

Dave Brolley brolley@redhat.com
Tue Jan 13 18:41:00 GMT 2009


Hi,

Some internal discussion among us here at Red Hat has led to some ideas 
for improvement in the management of client/server certificates and thus 
the ease of use of the client/server. The attached document outlines the 
details. As is usually the case with detailed designs, it may seem 
complicated at first, but here is the big picture summary:

1) Client/server certificate databases are no longer generated at build 
time and are no longer installed

2) One may now start a server simply by using 'stap-start-server'

3) If no server certificate is found by the server in order to identify 
itself, it will create one automatically. It will also automatically add 
this certificate to a local client-side certificate database for the 
user who started the server. Thus the server may be used immediately by 
that user with no further action required.

4) The user who started the server can use it locally simply by using 
'stap-client <normal stap args>'

5) Privileged (EUID=0) users can bless a server for general use by 
adding its certificate to a global
certificate database on the client using 'stap-add-server-cert 
<certfile> <dirname>'. The directory
<dirname/client> will be created and initialized, if necessary, and the 
server's certificate will be added.

6) Checks and balances will be in place to safeguard certificate 
databases from unauthorized access and to prevent unauthorized users 
from blessing servers for general use.

Changes 1 through 5 above are already committed at the head of our git 
source tree

Please read the attached document and, as always, please respond with 
comments, concerns or problems. Once this design settles I can start 
adding this information to the User's Guide.

Thanks,
Dave
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