Re: STARTTLS for erc

[Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com>]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 02:54:52 +0200 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote: 

LMI> So you have to know in advance that the server supports STARTTLS or not,
LMI> which is kinda, er, stupid.

LMI> However.  After logging in, the servers seem to output a capability list
LMI> of sort during the login greeting.  But at that point it's too late to
LMI> get STARTTLS support going.  *sigh*

LMI> So erc could close the connection, and then restart it, now with
LMI> STARTTLS.  But ircd logins are notoriously slow, so that's totally
LMI> icky.

I'd make "no" the default because that STARTTLS support is rare.

LMI> So perhaps something like the following would work?  If erc sees that
LMI> the server supports STARTTLS, then it will store this data for future
LMI> reference.  The next login will look up this data, and if the server
LMI> supports STARTTLS, it'll do STARTTLS.

LMI> But where would this per-server data be stored?

It could be in auth-source, together with the user name and password
which I am supposed to add eventually (I posted a patch on the
emacs-bugs list a month or two ago and haven't had the time to apply it
and test it).  If you want, go ahead and use that patch.  I would make
the STARTTLS preference a "tls" key with a "yes/no/opportunistic" value,
with "no" or missing meaning no STARTTLS should be done.

Otherwise you could store the STARTTLS preference in the server
definition of ERC itself.

LMI> And this would be somewhat brittle.  If a server goes from one type
LMI> (supporting STARTTLS) to another (not supporting STARTTLS), it might
LMI> mean that the next login might fail.

I think that's really rare, unless you're hitting a DNS round-robin.

Ted