Re: The auth interface on L4-Hurd

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 08:10:10PM +0200, Wolfgang Jährling wrote:
> In my understanding, an object handle will (on the client side) always
> appear in combination with another number: The thread ID that is
> responsible for the particular object.  This opens the question how
> authentication will work with object handles;

There is no reason why we couldn't do it exactly like we do it now.
The user can be a server for the object it creates, it can give a handle for
this to the auth server, and one to the server it wants to authenticate
this.  The server has to cooperate with the auth server and the user server
to pass this object handle it got to the auth server another time, where the
auth server can match them.

This is how we do it now, just that we don't have the user be a server here,
but use the "port server" mach.  This must work, as the same tricks are used
elsewhere inthe Hurd system where they must work as well.

Sure, it forces every user to be a server.  But they are already server, for
example, for signal messages, and for VM (in Neal's new model).

> - We use an object handle that refers to an object in auth, i.e. we
>   might do auth_makeauth on the client side to create a new object
>   handle that is not associates with and IDs in auth, and give that (by
>   copying, not giving it away entirely) to the server (we also need to
>   notify auth about this, as usual).

This also works, because auth is trusted, and it works exactly the same as
the other model (except that the user doesn't serve as a server for the
rendevouz object, but the auth server does).

> So it seems we need to modify the auth interface, for example by adding
> an "auth_prepare_authentication" RPC which will give us an object handle
> that can't be used for *any* RPCs to auth.

auth_get_rendevouz_handle.  But note that it is not really necessary.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
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Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
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