Using EXTERNAL mechanism with Cyrus SASL

Question

Does the Cyrus SASL api not support the EXTERNAL mechanism? I'm trying to use it as a client, but it returns SASL_NOMECH when asked.

% cat cyrus_sal_ex.c
/* cyrus_sasl_ex.c: Example of using the Cyrus SASL api */
#include <stdio.h>      /* for printf() */
#include <sasl/sasl.h>  /* for sasl_client_*(), SASL_*, sasl_*_t */

static char const * SASL_return_code(int const code) 
{
  switch(code) 
  {
    /* ... */
    case SASL_OK:     return "SASL_OK[0]: successful result";
    /* ... */
    case SASL_NOMECH: return "SASL_NOMECH[-4]: mechanism not supported";
    /* ... */
  }
  return "unrecognized";
}

int main()
{
  char const *  output = NULL;
  unsigned      outlen = 0;
  char const *  mechanism = NULL;
  sasl_conn_t * conn;

# define PRINT_RESULT( x ) do\
  {\
    int const __result = (x);\
    printf("%s == %d\n\t%s\n", #x, __result, SASL_return_code(__result));\
    if (__result < 0) goto done;\
  }\
  while (0)

  PRINT_RESULT( sasl_client_init( NULL ) );
  PRINT_RESULT( sasl_client_new( "fake", "fakey.mcfaker.ton", "127.0.0.1", "127.255.255.1", NULL, 0, &conn) );
  PRINT_RESULT( sasl_client_start( conn, "EXTERNAL", NULL, &output, &outlen, &mechanism) );

done:
# undef PRINT_RESULT
  printf("output: [%d bytes] : %s\n", outlen, (output ? output : "NULL") );
  printf("mechanism: %s\n", (mechanism ? mechanism : "NULL"));

  return 0;
}
% gcc -I/sw/include -L/sw/lib -lsasl2 cyrus_sasl_ex.c -o cyrus_sasl_ex # your header/library locations may vary
% ./cyrus_sasl_ex
sasl_client_init( NULL ) == 0
        SASL_OK[0]: successful result
sasl_client_new( "fake", "fakey.mcfaker.ton", "127.0.0.1", "127.255.255.1", NULL, 0, &conn) == 0
        SASL_OK[0]: successful result
sasl_client_start( conn, "EXTERNAL", NULL, &output, &outlen, &mechanism) == -4
        SASL_NOMECH[-4]: mechanism not supported
output: [0 bytes] : NULL
mechanism: EXTERNAL
%

I browsed through the source though, and it looks like all the clients should support the EXTERNAL mechanism:

cyrus-sasl-2.1.22/lib/client.c:
196 int sasl_client_init(const sasl_callback_t *callbacks)
197 {
...
227
228   sasl_client_add_plugin("EXTERNAL", &external_client_plug_init);
229

So I'm guessing I'm doing something wrong here. I tried adding all the sasl_callback_ts I could think of to sasl_client_*(), but none of them even got called. Is there some argument I should pass that asserts that EXTERNAL is an acceptable mechanism? Or is SASL_NOMECH always returned for EXTERNAL - b/c that doesn't seem right.

Can anyone help me out?

Answer 1

This is caused by the fact that Cyrus SASL was compiled with no mechanisms (they are assumed to be dynamically linked by default). Therefore, if there are no dynamically linked mechanisms it will report that there are no matching mechanisms.

Therefore, the better answer is to recompile Cyrus SASL with the mechanisms (called plugins in the Cyrus package) statically linked. If you look at the config.h header and #define the corresponding static defines to 1 then recompile (i manually added the plugin sources from the plugins dir to the libsasl2.a archive). Then when you link this library you wont get that error (without the workaround that you found).

Answer 2

Ok, I found the left out step.

According to sasl/sasl.h, I needed to set the SASL_AUTH_EXTERNAL property for my sasl_conn_t first:

/* set property in SASL connection state
 * returns:
 *  SASL_OK       -- value set
 *  SASL_BADPARAM -- invalid property or value
 */
LIBSASL_API int sasl_setprop(sasl_conn_t *conn,
                 int propnum,
                 const void *value);
#define SASL_SSF_EXTERNAL  100  /* external SSF active (sasl_ssf_t *) */
#define SASL_SEC_PROPS     101  /* sasl_security_properties_t */
#define SASL_AUTH_EXTERNAL 102  /* external authentication ID (const char *) */

/* If the SASL_AUTH_EXTERNAL value is non-NULL, then a special version of the
 * EXTERNAL mechanism is enabled (one for server-embedded EXTERNAL mechanisms).
 * Otherwise, the EXTERNAL mechanism will be absent unless a plug-in
 * including EXTERNAL is present.
 */

Once I did that, the rest worked out:

% cat cyrus_sasl_ex.c
/* Example of using the Cyrus SASL api */
#include <stdio.h>          /* for printf() */
#include <sasl/sasl.h>  /* for sasl_client_*(), SASL_*, sasl_*_t */

int main()
{
    char const *    output = NULL;
    unsigned            outlen = 0;
    char const *    mechanism = NULL;
    sasl_conn_t * conn;

#   define PRINT_RESULT( x ) do\
    {\
        int const __result = (x);\
        printf("%s == %d\n\t%s\n", #x, __result, sasl_errstring(__result,NULL,NULL));\
        if (__result < 0) goto done;\
    }\
    while (0)

    PRINT_RESULT( sasl_client_init( NULL ) );
    PRINT_RESULT( sasl_client_new( "fake", "fakey.mcfaker.ton", "127.0.0.1", "127.255.255.1", NULL, 0, &conn) );
    PRINT_RESULT( sasl_setprop( conn, SASL_AUTH_EXTERNAL, "fake authority" ) );
    PRINT_RESULT( sasl_client_start( conn, "EXTERNAL", NULL, &output, &outlen, &mechanism) );

done:
#   undef PRINT_RESULT
    printf("output: [%d bytes] : %s\n", outlen, (output ? output : "NULL") );
    printf("mechanism: %s\n", (mechanism ? mechanism : "NULL"));

    return 0;
}
% gcc -I/sw/include -L/sw/lib -lsasl2 cyrus_sasl_ex.c -o cyrus_sasl_ex
% ./cyrus_sasl_ex
sasl_client_init( NULL ) == 0
        successful result
sasl_client_new( "fake", "fakey.mcfaker.ton", "127.0.0.1", "127.255.255.1", NULL, 0, &conn) == 0
        successful result
sasl_setprop( conn, SASL_AUTH_EXTERNAL, "fake authority" ) == 0
        successful result
sasl_client_start( conn, "EXTERNAL", NULL, &output, &outlen, &mechanism) == 0
        successful result
output: [0 bytes] :
mechanism: EXTERNAL

However, since the version of Cyrus SASL that comes pre-installed on OS X 10.5 has a bug in it that makes the external plugin require a SASL_CB_USER callback and passes it a NULL pointer to store its return value in, this still means I'll have to update Cyrus SASL on all those machines.

Or maybe I'll just code around the bug.