This fixes some issues with the build system when building out of tree.
With this commit, it is now possible to do the following:
$ cd /tmp/build
$ /path/to/tinc/configure
$ make
Instead of using the hardcoded version number in configure.ac, this
makes tinc use the live version reported by "git describe",
queried on-the-fly during the build process and regenerated for every
build.
This makes tinc version output more useful, as tinc will now display the
number of commits since the last tag as well as the commit the binary is
built from, following the format described in git-describe(1).
Here's an example of tincd --version output:
tinc version release-1.1pre10-48-gc149315 (built Jun 29 2014 15:21:10, protocol 17.3)
When building directly from a release tag, this will look like the following:
tinc version release-1.1pre10 (built Jun 29 2014 15:21:10, protocol 17.3)
(Note that the format is slightly different - because of the way the
tags are named, it says "release-1.1pre10" instead of just "1.1pre10")
If git describe fails (for example when building from a release
tarball), the build automatically falls back to the autoconf-provided
VERSION macro (i.e. the old behavior).
This will report possible problems in the configuration files, and in
some cases offers to fix them.
The code is far from perfect yet. It expects keys to be in their default
locations, it doesn't check for Public/PrivateKey[File] statemetns yet.
It also does not correctly handle Ed25519 public keys yet.
Currently, tinc uses a naive algorithm for choosing MTU discovery probe
sizes, picking a size at random between minmtu and maxmtu.
This is of course suboptimal - since the behavior of probes is
deterministic (assuming no packet loss), it seems likely that using a
non-deterministic discovery algorithm will not yield the best results.
Furthermore, the randomness introduces a lot of variation in convergence
times.
The random solution also suffers from pathological cases - since it's
using a uniform distribution, it doesn't take into account the fact that
it's often more interesting to send small probes rather than large ones,
because getting replies is the only way we can make progress (assuming
the worst case scenario in which the OS doesn't know anything, therefore
keeping maxmtu constant). This can lead to absurd situations where the
discovery algorithm is close to the real MTU, but can't get to it
because the random number generator keeps generating numbers that are
past it.
The algorithm implemented in this patch aims to improve on the naive
random algorithm. It is organized around "cycles" of 8 probes; the sizes
of the probes decrease as we go through the cycle, thus making sure the
algorithm can cover lots of ground quickly (in case we're far from
actual MTU), but also examining the local area (in case we're close to
actual MTU). Using cycles ensures that the algorithm will "go back" to
large probes to better cover the new interval and to protect against
packet loss.
For the probe size itself, various mathematical models were simulated in
an attempt to find the one that converges the fastest; it has been
determined that using an exponential based on the size of the remaining
interval was the most effective option. The exponential is adjusted with
a magic multiplier fine-tuned to make tinc jump to the "most
interesting" (i.e. 1400+) section as soon as discovery starts.
Simulations indicate that assuming no packet loss and no help from the
OS (i.e. maxmtu stays constant), this algorithm will typically converge
to the *exact* MTU value in less than 10 probes, and will get within 8
bytes in less than 5 probes, for actual MTUs between 1417 and ~1450
(which is the range the algorithm is fine-tuned for). In contrast, the
previous algorithm gives results all over the place, sometimes taking
30+ probes to get in the ballpark. Because of the issues with the
distribution, the previous algorithm sometimes never gets to the precise
MTU value within any reasonable amount of time - in contrast, the new
algorithm will always get to the precise value in less than 30 probes,
even if the actual MTU is completely outside the optimized range.
The option "--disable-legacy-protocol" was added to the configure
script. The new protocol does not depend on any external crypto
libraries, so when the option is used tinc is no longer linked to
OpenSSL's libcrypto.
It then thinks there should be a rule to make the .c file, which does
not exist of course. Luckily, we can tell it that version.o is .PHONY,
and this will still cause the .o file to be regenerated and linked into
the binaries everytime make is called.
Instead of using a hardcoded version number in configure.ac, this makes
tinc use the live version reported by "git describe", queried on-the-fly
during the build process and regenerated for every build.
This provides several advantages:
- Less redundancy: git is now the source of truth for version
information, no need to store it in the repository itself.
- Simpler release process: just creating a git tag automatically
updates the version. No need to change files.
- More useful version information: tinc will now display the number of
commits since the last tag as well as the commit the binary is built
from, following the format described in git-describe(1).
Here's an example of tincd --version output:
tinc version release-1.1pre10-48-gc149315 (built Jun 29 2014 15:21:10, protocol 17.3)
When building directly from a release tag, this would like the following:
tinc version release-1.1pre10 (built Jun 29 2014 15:21:10, protocol 17.3)
(Note that the format is slightly different - because of the way the
tags are named, it says "release-1.1pre10" instead of just "1.1pre10")
This prevents the date and time shown in version information from
getting stale because of partial builds. With these changes, date and
time information is written to a dedicated object file that gets rebuilt
every time make is run, even if there are no changes.
The main reason to switch from AES-256-GCM to ChaCha-Poly1305 is to remove a
dependency on OpenSSL, whose behaviour of the AES-256-GCM decryption function
changes between versions. The source code for ChaCha-Pol1305 is small and in
the public domain, and can therefore be easily included in tinc itself.
Moreover, it is very fast even without using any optimized assembler, easily
outperforming AES-256-GCM on platforms that don't have special AES instructions
in hardware.
This uses the portable Ed25519 library made by Orson Peters, which in turn uses
the reference implementation made by Daniel J. Bernstein.
This implementation also allows Ed25519 keys to be used for key exchange, so
there is no need to add a separate implementation of Curve25519.
It seems like a lot of overhead to call access() for every possible extension
defined in PATHEXT, but apparently this is what Windows does itself too. At
least this avoids calling system() when the script one is looking for does not
exist at all.
Since the tinc utility also needs to call scripts, execute_script() is now
split off into its own source file.
Automake finds the files in the subdirectories of src/ now that they are
properly declared in the _SOURCES variables. Using EXTRA_DIST would now cause
.o files to be included in the tarball.
Using the tinc command, an administrator of an existing VPN can generate
invitations for new nodes. The invitation is a small URL that can easily
be copy&pasted into email or live chat. Another person can have tinc
automatically setup the necessary configuration files and exchange keys
with the server, by only using the invitation URL.
The invitation protocol uses temporary ECDSA keys. The invitation URL
consists of the hostname and port of the server, a hash of the server's
temporary ECDSA key and a cookie. When the client wants to accept an
invitation, it also creates a temporary ECDSA key, connects to the server
and says it wants to accept an invitation. Both sides exchange their
temporary keys. The client verifies that the server's key matches the hash
in the invitation URL. After setting up an SPTPS connection using the
temporary keys, the client gives the cookie to the server. If the cookie
is valid, the server sends the client an invitation file containing the
client's new name and a copy of the server's host config file. If everything
is ok, the client will generate a long-term ECDSA key and send it to the
server, which will add it to a new host config file for the client.
The invitation protocol currently allows multiple host config files to be
send from the server to the client. However, the client filters out
most configuration variables for its own host configuration file. In
particular, it only accepts Name, Mode, Broadcast, ConnectTo, Subnet and
AutoConnect. Also, at the moment no tinc-up script is generated.
When an invitation has succesfully been accepted, the client needs to start
the tinc daemon manually.
This gets rid of the rest of the symbolic links. However, as a consequence, the
crypto header files have now moved to src/, and can no longer contain
library-specific declarations. Therefore, cipher_t, digest_t, ecdh_t, ecdsa_t
and rsa_t are now all opaque types, and only pointers to those types can be
used.
There are several reasons for this:
- MacOS/X doesn't support polling the tap device using kqueue, requiring a
workaround to fall back to select().
- On Windows only sockets are properly handled, therefore tinc uses a second
thread that does a blocking ReadFile() on the TAP-Win32/64 device. However,
this does not mix well with libevent.
- Libevent, event just the core, is quite large, and although it is easy to get
and install on many platforms, it can be a burden.
- Libev is more lightweight and seems technically superior, but it doesn't
abstract away all the platform differences (for example, async events are not
supported on Windows).
DeviceType = multicast allows one to specify a multicast address and port with
a Device statement. Tinc will then read/send packets to that multicast group
instead of to a tun/tap device. This allows interaction with UML, QEMU and KVM
instances that are listening on the same group.
Apart from the platform specific tun/tap driver, link with the dummy and
raw_socket devices, and optionally with support for UML and VDE devices.
At runtime, the DeviceType option can be used to select which driver to
use.
Encryption and authentication of the meta connection is spread out over
meta.c and protocol_auth.c. The new protocol was added there as well,
leading to spaghetti code. To improve things, the new protocol will now
be implemented in sptps.[ch].
The goal is to have a very simplified version of TLS. There is a record
layer, and there are only two record types: application data and
handshake messages. The handshake message contains a random nonce, an
ephemeral ECDH public key, and an ECDSA signature over the former. After
the ECDH public keys are exchanged, a shared secret is calculated, and a
TLS style PRF is used to generate the key material for the cipher and
HMAC algorithm, and further communication is encrypted and authenticated.
A lot of the simplicity comes from the fact that both sides must have
each other's public keys in advance, and there are no options to choose.
There will be one fixed cipher suite, and both peers always authenticate
each other. (Inspiration taken from Ian Grigg's hypotheses[0].)
There might be some compromise in the future, to enable or disable
encryption, authentication and compression, but there will be no choice
of algorithms. This will allow SPTPS to be built with a few embedded
crypto algorithms instead of linking with huge crypto libraries.
The API is also kept simple. There is a start and a stop function. All
data necessary to make the connection work is passed in the start
function. Instead having both send- and receive-record functions, there
is a send-record function and a receive-data function. The latter will
pass protocol data received from the peer to the SPTPS implementation,
which will in turn call a receive-record callback function when
necessary. This hides all the handshaking from the application, and is
completely independent from any event loop or socket characteristics.
[0] http://iang.org/ssl/hn_hypotheses_in_secure_protocol_design.html
The generate-keys command now generates both an RSA and an ECDSA keypair,
but one can generate-rsa-keys or generate-ecdsa-keys to just generate one type.
It is modelled after the pseudorandom function from RFC4346 (TLS 1.1), the only
significant change is the use of SHA512 and Whirlpool instead of MD5 and SHA1.
