Re: [PATCH v20] GSSAPI encryption support

On 4/2/19 6:18 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> On Tue, Apr 2, 2019 at 18:10 Peter Eisentraut
> <peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com
> <mailto:peter(dot)eisentraut(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>> wrote:
>
> On 2019-02-23 17:27, Stephen Frost wrote:
> >> About pg_hba.conf: The "hostgss" keyword seems a bit confusing. 
> It only
> >> applies to encrypted gss-using connections, not all of them.  Maybe
> >> "hostgssenc" or "hostgsswrap"?
> > Not quite sure what you mean here, but 'hostgss' seems to be quite
> well
> > in-line with what we do for SSL...  as in, we have 'hostssl', we don't
> > say 'hostsslenc'.  I feel like I'm just not understanding what you
> mean
> > by "not all of them".
>
> Reading the latest patch, I think this is still a bit confusing.
> Consider an entry like
>
>     hostgss all             all             0.0.0.0/0
> <http://0.0.0.0/0>               gss
>
> The "hostgss" part means, the connection is GSS-*encrypted*.  The "gss"
> entry in the last column means use gss for *authentication*.  But didn't
> "hostgss" already imply that?  No.  I understand what's going on, but it
> seems quite confusing.  They both just say "gss"; you have to know a lot
> about the nuances of pg_hba.conf processing to get that.
>
> If you have line like
>
>     hostgss all             all             0.0.0.0/0
> <http://0.0.0.0/0>               md5
>
> it is not obvious that this means, if GSS-encrypted, use md5.  It could
> just as well mean, if GSS-authenticated, use md5.
>
> The analogy with SSL is such that we use "hostssl" for connections using
> SSL encryption and "cert" for the authentication method.  So there we
> use two different words for two different aspects of SSL.
>
>
> I don’t view it as confusing, but I’ll change it to hostgssenc as was
> suggested earlier to address that concern.  It’s a bit wordy but if it
> helps reduce confusion then that’s a good thing.

Personally I don't find it as confusing as is either, and I find hostgss
to be a good analog of hostssl. On the other hand hostgssenc is long and
unintuitive. So +1 for leaving as is and -1 one for changing it IMHO.

Joe
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