bug#34102: [staging] Guix fails to download from TLSv1.3-enabled servers

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Marius,

Marius Bakke <address@hidden> skribis:

> On the staging branch (with GnuTLS 3.6), `guix download` will negotiate
> TLSv1.3 with servers that support it, and fail shortly after the initial
> handshake:
>
> $ ./pre-inst-env guix download https://data.iana.org
> Starting download of /tmp/guix-file.vJ4v7h
> From https://data.iana.org...
> Throw to key `gnutls-error' with args `(#<gnutls-error-enum Resource 
> temporarily unavailable, try again.> read_from_session_record_port)'.
> failed to download "/tmp/guix-file.vJ4v7h" from "https://data.iana.org";
> guix download: error: https://data.iana.org: download failed

Ouch, thanks for the heads-up!

> The GnuTLS maintainer have written a blog post about TLS 1.3 porting[0],
> and I suspect the problem is that Guix (or the GnuTLS Guile bindings)
> does not handle the "GNUTLS_E_REAUTH_REQUEST" error code; however my
> attempts at catching it (or any error code) has been unfruitful.

I think we need to update the Guile bindings to wrap
GNUTLS_E_REAUTH_REQUEST, GNUTLS_POST_HANDSHAKE_AUTH, and
‘gnutls_reauth’, which are currently missing.  Would you like to give it
a try?

What’s unclear to me from the blog post is exactly when
GNUTLS_E_REAUTH_REQUEST is delivered to the application.  Is it the next
time the application calls some (possibly unrelated) GnuTLS function?

> This is an obvious merge blocker, help wanted!  Disabling TLS1.3 in the
> priority string works as a last-resort workaround.

Yes, that’s a stop-gap measure we should probably apply for now:

diff --git a/guix/build/download.scm b/guix/build/download.scm
index c08221b3b2..23c9a4d466 100644
--- a/guix/build/download.scm
+++ b/guix/build/download.scm
@@ -268,7 +268,10 @@ host name without trailing dot."
     ;; "(gnutls) Priority Strings"); see <http://bugs.gnu.org/23311>.
     ;; Explicitly disable SSLv3, which is insecure:
     ;; <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7568>.
-    (set-session-priorities! session "NORMAL:%COMPAT:-VERS-SSL3.0")
+    ;;
+    ;; FIXME: Since we currently fail to handle TLS 1.3, remove it; see
+    ;; <https://bugs.gnu.org/34102>.
+    (set-session-priorities! session 
"NORMAL:%COMPAT:-VERS-SSL3.0:-VERS-TLS1.3")
 
     (set-session-credentials! session
                               (if (and verify-certificate? ca-certs)

Any objections?

Thanks,
Ludo’.