Re: RPG SSL Sockets

Alan,

Unfortunately, there isn't one single "good" answer to your question. Different network protocols upgrade to SSL at different times.

For example, some protocols (SMTP, FTP, etc) have something like a 'STARTSSL' keyword. You connect in plain text, and then send the STARTSSL keyword to tell the server you want to upgrade to SSL, and only when the server responds with an "OK" message will you actually initiate SSL.

In HTTP, you can connect with SSL immediately -- but only if it's a direct connect. If you're using a proxy, then you need to connect to the proxy, tell the proxy to set up a tunnel, and once the tunnel is open, start SSL. So in that case, you have to do some work in plaintext, and upgrade to SSL later.

So, I typically have the "worker" job do the SSL upgrade, since it may need to communicate in plaintext before the SSL upgrade.

To make things easier, I put all of the code for this stuff in a service program (so I don't have to re-code all my SSL logic in every worker application separately.)

Also, unless you're responding to a high-volume of requests, you might consider using INETD so you don't have to write your own listener/spawner jobs. (INETD does the listening for you, and spawns a worker job, so all you have to do is write the worker job part.)

-SK

On 11/5/2014 4:02 PM, Alan Campin wrote:

Scott, I have written a socket server in RPG which as two components. A
Socket Server and a Worker Job that gets spawned. Works good but I am
thinking about adding SSL.

My question to you is where do you upgrade the socket to SSL. It would seem
logical to upgrade the socket to SSL in the Socket Server program before it
gets spawned to create the worker job but I was wondering.

When I spawn the new job, it passes the socket descriptor to the worker
program. If I upgrade the socket to be secure will that information be
passed to worker program or do I need to upgrade the socket after I arrive
at spawned worker job?

Hopefully this is clear. Thanks for any help.