Re: RPG SSL Sockets

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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.