On Tue, 6 Jul 2004, Jan Kiszka wrote:
If it's not a windows specific problem, then I suppost it's best to
add the functionallity in the openvpn binary so we get the
portability.
I don't think the openvpn binary needs to know about this. But the
service wrapper probably needs a second mode of operation, where
instead of getting its config files by scanning a directory, it
listens on a local socket for a command from the GUI to start an
openvpn.exe instance.
Then don't forget that we will need a similar wrapper for unix as
well...
Why do we need a wrapper in unix? Can't the openvpn binary be run as a
normal user in unix?
If we need root-privs, what's wrong with installing openvpn as suid
root and have it drop its privs after start-up?
Yes, this will work. But I'm afraid - maybe I'm wrong - that the GUI will
then have to be implemented quite differently on Windows and Unix. On
Windows, we would open a socket and both send the commands over it and
receive the status. On Unix, we would first start the process and then
connect to a socket for status information (BTW, which socket would then be
used when multiple instances of openvpn are running?).
Yes and No. The way the GUI starts an openvpn process will have to
implemented in diffrent ways for unix and windows. On Windows it will open
a socket to the service wrapper and tell it to start an openvpn process
with a specific config. On unix it will launch the openvpn process itself.
This is not many lines of code so I think it can be handled with ifdefs
quite cleanly.
Then when the openvpn process has been started the gui connects to a
socket that openvpn is listening on to receive status or send other
commands that we can think of.
The socket each openvpn process is listening on should be specified in the
config-file with an option like "management 127.0.0.1 6001", where 6001 is
the TCP port number. So each process should be listening on a unique port.
A perhaps cleaner way is that the gui adds the manangement option when it
starts the openvpn process, so the user don't have to bother setting the
correct management option in his config-files.
This interface to the openvpn deamon will be the same regardless of the
platform.
--
_____________________________________________________________
Mathias Sundman (^) ASCII Ribbon Campaign
NILINGS AB X NO HTML/RTF in e-mail
Tel: +46-(0)8-666 32 28 / \ NO Word docs in e-mail
