[19969] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: GnuTLS (libgrypt really) and Postfix
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Werner Koch)
Tue Feb 14 11:40:14 2006
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: Werner Koch <wk@gnupg.org>
To: Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:52:23 +0100
In-Reply-To: <jas7j7zy2kz.fsf@latte.josefsson.org> (Simon Josefsson's message
of "Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:29:00 +0100")
On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:29:00 +0100, Simon Josefsson said:
> That /dev/random doesn't exist seem like a quite possible state to me.
Running Linux this is not possible because /dev/random is guarenteed
to be available.
> Further, a library is not in a good position to report errors. A
> users will sit there wondering why Postfix, or some other complex
I don't know where Postfix dumps the error messages from Libcrypt:
fd = open( name, O_RDONLY );
if( fd == -1 )
log_fatal ("can't open %s: %s\n", name, strerror(errno) );
I guess you need to blame postfix for this.
> recommendation to avoid GnuTLS because libgcrypt calls exit suggest
> that the Postfix developers didn't care to investigate how to use
> GnuTLS and libgcrypt properly. So I don't think there is any real
So may I conclude that it is actually Good Thing that in this case
libgcrypt refrained from continuing to preserve the caller from false
security.
> I'd say that the most flexible approach for a library is to write
> thread-safe code that doesn't need access to mutexes to work properly.
Yes. We discussed this already at length at more appropriate places.
> That seem like a poor argument to me. It may be valid for embedded
> devices, but for most desktop PCs, Linux should provide a useful
> /dev/urandom.
I can only tell what Ted told me years ago.
Shalom-Salam,
Werner
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