path: root/HACKING

This document tries to describe the software layout and design of the library.
It should provide some help for contributing code to this package.

CONTRIBUTING TO NSS-LDAPD
=========================

Contributions to nss-ldapd are most welcome. However not all contributions
will be automatically integrated. Some notes:

* for large changes it is a good idea to send an email first
* send your patches in unified diff (diff -u) format
* try to use the svn version of the software to develop the patch
* clearly state which problem you're trying to solve and how this is
  accomplished
* please follow the existing coding conventions
* patches will be integrated on a best-effort bases
* please test the patch and include information on testing with the patch
  (platforms tested, etc)
* contributions will be acknowledged in the AUTHORS file
* include a copyright statement in the patched code if you feel the
  contribution is significant enough (e.g. more than a few lines)
* when including third-party code, retain copyright information (copyright
  holder and license) and ensure that the license is LGPL compatible

Please contact Arthur de Jong <arthur@ch.tudelft.nl> if you want to
contribute or use the Debian BTS if you're using the Debian package.


BUILD DEPENDENCIES
==================

For building svn snapshots the following tools are needed:

* autoconf (2.61 is used but 2.59 is minimal)
* automake (1.10 is used)
* check (0.9.5 is used)

and of course the usual build tools (gcc/make/etc). Also see debian/control
(Build-Depends field) for libraries you need.

To build the svn snapshot run the autogen.sh shell script to build the
configure script. When developing patches please use --enable-warnings with
configure and don't introduce too many new warnings. For building the manual
pages docbook2x is used.


RELEASE VERSIONING
==================

A new versioning scheme was chosen over the nss_ldap release scheme. The
scheme is a simple major.minor numbering starting with 0.1. Until a 1.0
release is made the code will be considered work in progress. The interfaces
may change and features may be added and removed.


GENERAL DESIGN
==============

The basic design splits the functionality in two parts. The NSS part
interfaces with libc and translates the NSS requests into simple generic
requests (e.g. "get user with name test", "get group with gid 101" or "get all
shadow entries"). Translating these requests into LDAP requests is then the
job of the daemon (nslcd) so that the NSS part won't have to know anything
about LDAP (in fact replacing it with another lookup method is very simple).

                nslcd  -> OpenLDAP -> LDAP server
                  ^
    libc NSS -> libnss_ldap.so

design goals
------------
* make it as simple as possible
* design as specified above
* simpler configuration and semantics
* simpler, clearer and completer documentation
* split source code into directories (src, src/hacks, src/aix, src/irs, etc)
* get rid of unneeded code and complexity
* split complexity in two parts (LDAP interface in server, NSS interface in
  library)
* have a stable, easily maintainable piece of quality software


NSS PART
========

The NSS part is implemented in files in the nss directory. The functions are
split into files according to the database they support. All functions look
like:

_nss_ldap_FUNCTION_r(...)
  This function opens the connection to the nslcd (with a time-out) builds the
  correct data structures and does a request (write()) to the nslcd waiting
  for an answer (again with a time-out)

Currently a number of macros are used to build most of the function bodies for
these functions. A more elegant solution is welcome.

Some handy links:
http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/gnu/Manuals/glibc-2.2.3/html_chapter/libc_28.html#SEC596
http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/index.html


THE COMMUNICATIONS PROTOCOL
===========================

The protocol used for communicating between the NSS library and the nslcd
daemon is very simple and almost fully described in the nslcd.h header file.
The nslcd-common.h header file defines some macros that are used for reading
and writing protocol entities (strings, 32-bit integers, etc).

Some of the protocol handling code is automatically generated from the macros
defined in nslcd.h. This cannot be done automatically in every case though so
changing the protocol requires manual checking in the relevant source files in
both the nss and the nslcd directories.

If the protocol is changed in an incompatible way the protocol version should
be incremented in nslcd.h. There is currently no versioning scheme available
for this.

A special module (common/tio.c) was made so we can define simpler semantics
for time-out values and buffer sizes. Both tha NSS library and nslcd use this
module which means that it includes functionality that is needed for both
(e.g. large write buffers for the server part and large resettable read
buffers for the NSS part). Maybe building two modules from the same source
with different features in them is an option (e.g. the NSS part needs the
read buffers and handling of SIGPIPE and the nslcd part needs the write
buffers and possibly flushing in the background).


SERVER PART
===========

At the server end a dispatcher picks up the request and delegates it to one of
the database specific functions.

nslcd_FUNCION(...)
  This functions fills in the correct parameters from the request. This
  function should write responses to the stream. Almost all these functions
  are generated from a macro in common.h.


SECURITY NOTES
==============

This design does open up the system to more potential security issues as there
is now a local interface to a daemon with privileges. Before processes could
only potentially exploit bugs in the library and gain the privileges of the
process that was doing the name lookups. In this case the privileges of the
daemon are potentially exposed.

The deamon should be changed to set a specific less-privileged user and
group to minimize the riscs. Code for this is already in place. Configuration
options should be added and the Debian packaging should use this.