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1NOTES, THOUGHTS, and EVERYTHING 1Notes: 2001-09-24
2-------------------------------
3
4(1) Concurrency and locking ... I made a change to the ENGINE_free code
5 because I spotted a potential hold-up in proceedings (doing too
6 much inside a lock including calling a callback), there may be
7 other bits like this. What do the speed/optimisation freaks think
8 of this aspect of the code and design? There's lots of locking for
9 manipulation functions and I need that to keep things nice and
10 solid, but this manipulation is mostly (de)initialisation, I would
11 think that most run-time locking is purely in the ENGINE_init and
12 ENGINE_finish calls that might be made when getting handles for
13 RSA (and friends') structures. These would be mostly reference
14 count operations as the functional references should always be 1
15 or greater at run-time to prevent init/deinit thrashing.
16
17(2) nCipher support, via the HWCryptoHook API, is now in the code.
18 Apparently this hasn't been tested too much yet, but it looks
19 good. :-) Atalla support has been added too, but shares a lot in
20 common with Ben's original hooks in bn_exp.c (although it has been
21 ENGINE-ified, and error handling wrapped around it) and it's also
22 had some low-volume testing, so it should be usable.
23
24(3) Of more concern, we need to work out (a) how to put together usable
25 RAND_METHODs for units that just have one "get n or less random
26 bytes" function, (b) we also need to determine how to hook the code
27 in crypto/rand/ to use the ENGINE defaults in a way similar to what
28 has been done in crypto/rsa/, crypto/dsa/, etc.
29
30(4) ENGINE should really grow to encompass more than 3 public key
31 algorithms and randomness gathering. The structure/data level of
32 the engine code is hidden from code outside the crypto/engine/
33 directory so change shouldn't be too viral. More important though
34 is how things should evolve ... this needs thought and discussion.
35
36
37-----------------------------------==*==-----------------------------------
38
39More notes 2000-08-01
40---------------------
41
42Geoff Thorpe, who designed the engine part, wrote a pretty good description
43of the thoughts he had when he built it, good enough to include verbatim here
44(with his permission) -- Richard Levitte
45
46
47Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2000 16:54:08 +0100 (BST)
48From: Geoff Thorpe
49Subject: Re: The thoughts to merge BRANCH_engine into the main trunk are
50 emerging
51
52Hi there,
53
54I'm going to try and do some justice to this, but I'm a little short on
55time and the there is an endless amount that could be discussed on this
56subject. sigh ... please bear with me :-)
57
58> The changes in BRANCH_engine dig deep into the core of OpenSSL, for example
59> into the RSA and RAND routines, adding a level of indirection which is needed
60> to keep the abstraction, as far as I understand. It would be a good thing if
61> those who do play with those things took a look at the changes that have been
62> done in the branch and say out loud how much (or hopefully little) we've made
63> fools of ourselves.
64
65The point here is that the code that has emerged in the BRANCH_engine
66branch was based on some initial requirements of mine that I went in and
67addressed, and Richard has picked up the ball and run with it too. It
68would be really useful to get some review of the approach we've taken, but
69first I think I need to describe as best I can the reasons behind what has
70been done so far, in particular what issues we have tried to address when
71doing this, and what issues we have intentionally (or necessarily) tried
72to avoid.
73
74methods, engines, and evps
75--------------------------
76
77There has been some dicussion, particularly with Steve, about where this
78ENGINE stuff might fit into the conceptual picture as/when we start to
79abstract algorithms a little bit to make the library more extensible. In
80particular, it would desirable to have algorithms (symmetric, hash, pkc,
81etc) abstracted in some way that allows them to be just objects sitting in
82a list (or database) ... it'll just happen that the "DSA" object doesn't
83support encryption whereas the "RSA" object does. This requires a lot of
84consideration to begin to know how to tackle it; in particular how
85encapsulated should these things be? If the objects also understand their
86own ASN1 encodings and what-not, then it would for example be possible to
87add support for elliptic-curve DSA in as a new algorithm and automatically
88have ECC-DSA certificates supported in SSL applications. Possible, but not
89easy. :-)
90
91Whatever, it seems that the way to go (if I've grok'd Steve's comments on
92this in the past) is to amalgamate these things in EVP as is already done
93(I think) for ciphers or hashes (Steve, please correct/elaborate). I
94certainly think something should be done in this direction because right
95now we have different source directories, types, functions, and methods
96for each algorithm - even when conceptually they are very much different
97feathers of the same bird. (This is certainly all true for the public-key
98stuff, and may be partially true for the other parts.)
99
100ENGINE was *not* conceived as a way of solving this, far from it. Nor was
101it conceived as a way of replacing the various "***_METHOD"s. It was
102conceived as an abstraction of a sort of "virtual crypto device". If we
103lived in a world where "EVP_ALGO"s (or something like them) encapsulated
104particular algorithms like RSA,DSA,MD5,RC4,etc, and "***_METHOD"s
105encapsulated interfaces to algorithms (eg. some algo's might support a
106PKC_METHOD, a HASH_METHOD, or a CIPHER_METHOD, who knows?), then I would
107think that ENGINE would encapsulate an implementation of arbitrarily many
108of those algorithms - perhaps as alternatives to existing algorithms
109and/or perhaps as new previously unimplemented algorithms. An ENGINE could
110be used to contain an alternative software implementation, a wrapper for a
111hardware acceleration and/or key-management unit, a comms-wrapper for
112distributing cryptographic operations to remote machines, or any other
113"devices" your imagination can dream up.
114
115However, what has been done in the ENGINE branch so far is nothing more
116than starting to get our toes wet. I had a couple of self-imposed
117requirements when putting the initial abstraction together, and I may have
118already posed these in one form or another on the list, but briefly;
119
120 (i) only bother with public key algorithms for now, and maybe RAND too
121 (motivated by the need to get hardware support going and the fact
122 this was a comparitively easy subset to address to begin with).
123
124 (ii) don't change (if at all possible) the existing crypto code, ie. the
125 implementations, the way the ***_METHODs work, etc.
126
127 (iii) ensure that if no function from the ENGINE code is ever called then
128 things work the way they always did, and there is no memory
129 allocation (otherwise the failure to cleanup would be a problem -
130 this is part of the reason no STACKs were used, the other part of
131 the reason being I found them inappropriate).
132
133 (iv) ensure that all the built-in crypto was encapsulated by one of
134 these "ENGINE"s and that this engine was automatically selected as
135 the default.
136
137 (v) provide the minimum hooking possible in the existing crypto code
138 so that global functions (eg. RSA_public_encrypt) do not need any
139 extra parameter, yet will use whatever the current default ENGINE
140 for that RSA key is, and that the default can be set "per-key"
141 and globally (new keys will assume the global default, and keys
142 without their own default will be operated on using the global
143 default). NB: Try and make (v) conflict as little as possible with
144 (ii). :-)
145
146 (vi) wrap the ENGINE code up in duct tape so you can't even see the
147 corners. Ie. expose no structures at all, just black-box pointers.
148
149 (v) maintain internally a list of ENGINEs on which a calling
150 application can iterate, interrogate, etc. Allow a calling
151 application to hook in new ENGINEs, remove ENGINEs from the list,
152 and enforce uniqueness within the global list of each ENGINE's
153 "unique id".
154
155 (vi) keep reference counts for everything - eg. this includes storing a
156 reference inside each RSA structure to the ENGINE that it uses.
157 This is freed when the RSA structure is destroyed, or has its
158 ENGINE explicitly changed. The net effect needs to be that at any
159 time, it is deterministic to know whether an ENGINE is in use or
160 can be safely removed (or unloaded in the case of the other type
161 of reference) without invalidating function pointers that may or
162 may not be used indavertently in the future. This was actually
163 one of the biggest problems to overcome in the existing OpenSSL
164 code - implementations had always been assumed to be ever-present,
165 so there was no trivial way to get round this.
166
167 (vii) distinguish between structural references and functional
168 references.
169
170A *little* detail
171----------------- 2-----------------
172 3
173While my mind is on it; I'll illustrate the bit in item (vii). This idea 4This "description" (if one chooses to call it that) needed some major updating
174turned out to be very handy - the ENGINEs themselves need to be operated 5so here goes. This update addresses a change being made at the same time to
175on and manipulated simply as objects without necessarily trying to 6OpenSSL, and it pretty much completely restructures the underlying mechanics of
176"enable" them for use. Eg. most host machines will not have the necessary 7the "ENGINE" code. So it serves a double purpose of being a "ENGINE internals
177hardware or software to support all the engines one might compile into 8for masochists" document *and* a rather extensive commit log message. (I'd get
178OpenSSL, yet it needs to be possible to iterate across the ENGINEs, 9lynched for sticking all this in CHANGES or the commit mails :-).
179querying their names, properties, etc - all happening in a thread-safe 10
180manner that uses reference counts (if you imagine two threads iterating 11ENGINE_TABLE underlies this restructuring, as described in the internal header
181through a list and one thread removing the ENGINE the other is currently 12"eng_int.h", implemented in eng_table.c, and used in each of the "class" files;
182looking at - you can see the gotcha waiting to happen). For all of this, 13tb_rsa.c, tb_dsa.c, etc.
183*structural references* are used and operate much like the other reference 14
184counts in OpenSSL. 15However, "EVP_CIPHER" underlies the motivation and design of ENGINE_TABLE so
185 16I'll mention a bit about that first. EVP_CIPHER (and most of this applies
186The other kind of reference count is for *functional* references - these 17equally to EVP_MD for digests) is both a "method" and a algorithm/mode
187indicate a reference on which the caller can actually assume the 18identifier that, in the current API, "lingers". These cipher description +
188particular ENGINE to be initialised and usable to perform the operations 19implementation structures can be defined or obtained directly by applications,
189it implements. Any increment or decrement of the functional reference 20or can be loaded "en masse" into EVP storage so that they can be catalogued and
190count automatically invokes a corresponding change in the structural 21searched in various ways, ie. two ways of encrypting with the "des_cbc"
191reference count, as it is fairly obvious that a functional reference is a 22algorithm/mode pair are;
192restricted case of a structural reference. So struct_ref >= funct_ref at 23
193all times. NB: functional references are usually obtained by a call to 24(i) directly;
194ENGINE_init(), but can also be created implicitly by calls that require a 25 const EVP_CIPHER *cipher = EVP_des_cbc();
195new functional reference to be created, eg. ENGINE_set_default(). Either 26 EVP_EncryptInit(&ctx, cipher, key, iv);
196way the only time the underlying ENGINE's "init" function is really called 27 [ ... use EVP_EncryptUpdate() and EVP_EncryptFinal() ...]
197is when the (functional) reference count increases to 1, similarly the 28
198underlying "finish" handler is only called as the count goes down to 0. 29(ii) indirectly;
199The effect of this, for example, is that if you set the default ENGINE for 30 OpenSSL_add_all_ciphers();
200RSA operations to be "cswift", then its functional reference count will 31 cipher = EVP_get_cipherbyname("des_cbc");
201already be at least 1 so the CryptoSwift shared-library and the card will 32 EVP_EncryptInit(&ctx, cipher, key, iv);
202stay loaded and initialised until such time as all RSA keys using the 33 [ ... etc ... ]
203cswift ENGINE are changed or destroyed and the default ENGINE for RSA 34
204operations has been changed. This prevents repeated thrashing of init and 35The latter is more generally used because it also allows ciphers/digests to be
205finish handling if the count keeps getting down as far as zero. 36looked up based on other identifiers which can be useful for automatic cipher
206 37selection, eg. in SSL/TLS, or by user-controllable configuration.
207Otherwise, the way the ENGINE code has been put together I think pretty 38
208much reflects the above points. The reason for the ENGINE structure having 39The important point about this is that EVP_CIPHER definitions and structures are
209individual RSA_METHOD, DSA_METHOD, etc pointers is simply that it was the 40passed around with impunity and there is no safe way, without requiring massive
210easiest way to go about things for now, to hook it all into the raw 41rewrites of many applications, to assume that EVP_CIPHERs can be reference
211RSA,DSA,etc code, and I was trying to the keep the structure invisible 42counted. One an EVP_CIPHER is exposed to the caller, neither it nor anything it
212anyway so that the way this is internally managed could be easily changed 43comes from can "safely" be destroyed. Unless of course the way of getting to
213later on when we start to work out what's to be done about these other 44such ciphers is via entirely distinct API calls that didn't exist before.
214abstractions. 45However existing API usage cannot be made to understand when an EVP_CIPHER
215 46pointer, that has been passed to the caller, is no longer being used.
216Down the line, if some EVP-based technique emerges for adequately 47
217encapsulating algorithms and all their various bits and pieces, then I can 48The other problem with the existing API w.r.t. to hooking EVP_CIPHER support
218imagine that "ENGINE" would turn into a reference-counting database of 49into ENGINE is storage - the OBJ_NAME-based storage used by EVP to register
219these EVP things, of which the default "openssl" ENGINE would be the 50ciphers simultaneously registers cipher *types* and cipher *implementations* -
220library's own object database of pre-built software implemented algorithms 51they are effectively the same thing, an "EVP_CIPHER" pointer. The problem with
221(and such). It would also be cool to see the idea of "METHOD"s detached 52hooking in ENGINEs is that multiple ENGINEs may implement the same ciphers. The
222from the algorithms themselves ... so RSA, DSA, ElGamal, etc can all 53solution is necessarily that ENGINE-provided ciphers simply are not registered,
223expose essentially the same METHOD (aka interface), which would include 54stored, or exposed to the caller in the same manner as existing ciphers. This is
224any querying/flagging stuff to identify what the algorithm can/can't do, 55especially necessary considering the fact ENGINE uses reference counts to allow
225its name, and other stuff like max/min block sizes, key sizes, etc. This 56for cleanup, modularity, and DSO support - yet EVP_CIPHERs, as exposed to
226would result in ENGINE similarly detaching its internal database of 57callers in the current API, support no such controls.
227algorithm implementations from the function definitions that return 58
228interfaces to them. I think ... 59Another sticking point for integrating cipher support into ENGINE is linkage.
229 60Already there is a problem with the way ENGINE supports RSA, DSA, etc whereby
230As for DSOs etc. Well the DSO code is pretty handy (but could be made much 61they are available *because* they're part of a giant ENGINE called "openssl".
231more so) for loading vendor's driver-libraries and talking to them in some 62Ie. all implementations *have* to come from an ENGINE, but we get round that by
232generic way, but right now there's still big problems associated with 63having a giant ENGINE with all the software support encapsulated. This creates
233actually putting OpenSSL code (ie. new ENGINEs, or anything else for that 64linker hassles if nothing else - linking a 1-line application that calls 2 basic
234matter) in dynamically loadable libraries. These problems won't go away in 65RSA functions (eg. "RSA_free(RSA_new());") will result in large quantities of
235a hurry so I don't think we should expect to have any kind of 66ENGINE code being linked in *and* because of that DSA, DH, and RAND also. If we
236shared-library extensions any time soon - but solving the problems is a 67continue with this approach for EVP_CIPHER support (even if it *was* possible)
237good thing to aim for, and would as a side-effect probably help make 68we would lose our ability to link selectively by selectively loading certain
238OpenSSL more usable as a shared-library itself (looking at the things 69implementations of certain functionality. Touching any part of any kind of
239needed to do this will show you why). 70crypto would result in massive static linkage of everything else. So the
240 71solution is to change the way ENGINE feeds existing "classes", ie. how the
241One of the problems is that if you look at any of the ENGINE 72hooking to ENGINE works from RSA, DSA, DH, RAND, as well as adding new hooking
242implementations, eg. hw_cswift.c or hw_ncipher.c, you'll see how it needs 73for EVP_CIPHER, and EVP_MD.
243a variety of functionality and definitions from various areas of OpenSSL, 74
244including crypto/bn/, crypto/err/, crypto/ itself (locking for example), 75The way this is now being done is by mostly reverting back to how things used to
245crypto/dso/, crypto/engine/, crypto/rsa, etc etc etc. So if similar code 76work prior to ENGINE :-). Ie. RSA now has a "RSA_METHOD" pointer again - this
246were to be suctioned off into shared libraries, the shared libraries would 77was previously replaced by an "ENGINE" pointer and all RSA code that required
247either have to duplicate all the definitions and code and avoid loader 78the RSA_METHOD would call ENGINE_get_RSA() each time on its ENGINE handle to
248conflicts, or OpenSSL would have to somehow expose all that functionality 79temporarily get and use the ENGINE's RSA implementation. Apart from being more
249to the shared-library. If this isn't a big enough problem, the issue of 80efficient, switching back to each RSA having an RSA_METHOD pointer also allows
250binary compatibility will be - anyone writing Apache modules can tell you 81us to conceivably operate with *no* ENGINE. As we'll see, this removes any need
251that (Ralf? Ben? :-). However, I don't think OpenSSL would need to be 82for a fallback ENGINE that encapsulates default implementations - we can simply
252quite so forgiving as Apache should be, so OpenSSL could simply tell its 83have our RSA structure pointing its RSA_METHOD pointer to the software
253version to the DSO and leave the DSO with the problem of deciding whether 84implementation and have its ENGINE pointer set to NULL.
254to proceed or bail out for fear of binary incompatibilities. 85
255 86A look at the EVP_CIPHER hooking is most explanatory, the RSA, DSA (etc) cases
256Certainly one thing that would go a long way to addressing this is to 87turn out to be degenerate forms of the same thing. The EVP storage of ciphers,
257embark on a bit of an opaqueness mission. I've set the ENGINE code up with 88and the existing EVP API functions that return "software" implementations and
258this in mind - it's so draconian that even to declare your own ENGINE, you 89descriptions remain untouched. However, the storage takes more meaning in terms
259have to get the engine code to create the underlying ENGINE structure, and 90of "cipher description" and less meaning in terms of "implementation". When an
260then feed in the new ENGINE's function/method pointers through various 91EVP_CIPHER_CTX is actually initialised with an EVP_CIPHER method and is about to
261"set" functions. The more of the code that takes on such a black-box 92begin en/decryption, the hooking to ENGINE comes into play. What happens is that
262approach, the more of the code that will be (a) easy to expose to shared 93cipher-specific ENGINE code is asked for an ENGINE pointer (a functional
263libraries that need it, and (b) easy to expose to applications wanting to 94reference) for any ENGINE that is registered to perform the algo/mode that the
264use OpenSSL itself as a shared-library. From my own explorations in 95provided EVP_CIPHER structure represents. Under normal circumstances, that
265OpenSSL, the biggest leviathan I've seen that is a problem in this respect 96ENGINE code will return NULL because no ENGINEs will have had any cipher
266is the BIGNUM code. Trying to "expose" the bignum code through any kind of 97implementations *registered*. As such, a NULL ENGINE pointer is stored in the
267organised "METHODs", let alone do all the necessary bignum operations 98EVP_CIPHER_CTX context, and the EVP_CIPHER structure is left hooked into the
268solely through functions rather than direct access to the structures and 99context and so is used as the implementation. Pretty much how things work now
269macros, will be a massive pain in the "r"s. 100except we'd have a redundant ENGINE pointer set to NULL and doing nothing.
270 101
271Anyway, I'm done for now - hope it was readable. Thoughts? 102Conversely, if an ENGINE *has* been registered to perform the algorithm/mode
272 103combination represented by the provided EVP_CIPHER, then a functional reference
273Cheers, 104to that ENGINE will be returned to the EVP_CIPHER_CTX during initialisation.
274Geoff 105That functional reference will be stored in the context (and released on
275 106cleanup) - and having that reference provides a *safe* way to use an EVP_CIPHER
276 107definition that is private to the ENGINE. Ie. the EVP_CIPHER provided by the
277-----------------------------------==*==----------------------------------- 108application will actually be replaced by an EVP_CIPHER from the registered
109ENGINE - it will support the same algorithm/mode as the original but will be a
110completely different implementation. Because this EVP_CIPHER isn't stored in the
111EVP storage, nor is it returned to applications from traditional API functions,
112there is no associated problem with it not having reference counts. And of
113course, when one of these "private" cipher implementations is hooked into
114EVP_CIPHER_CTX, it is done whilst the EVP_CIPHER_CTX holds a functional
115reference to the ENGINE that owns it, thus the use of the ENGINE's EVP_CIPHER is
116safe.
117
118The "cipher-specific ENGINE code" I mentioned is implemented in tb_cipher.c but
119in essence it is simply an instantiation of "ENGINE_TABLE" code for use by
120EVP_CIPHER code. tb_digest.c is virtually identical but, of course, it is for
121use by EVP_MD code. Ditto for tb_rsa.c, tb_dsa.c, etc. These instantiations of
122ENGINE_TABLE essentially provide linker-separation of the classes so that even
123if ENGINEs implement *all* possible algorithms, an application using only
124EVP_CIPHER code will link at most code relating to EVP_CIPHER, tb_cipher.c, core
125ENGINE code that is independant of class, and of course the ENGINE
126implementation that the application loaded. It will *not* however link any
127class-specific ENGINE code for digests, RSA, etc nor will it bleed over into
128other APIs, such as the RSA/DSA/etc library code.
129
130ENGINE_TABLE is a little more complicated than may seem necessary but this is
131mostly to avoid a lot of "init()"-thrashing on ENGINEs (that may have to load
132DSOs, and other expensive setup that shouldn't be thrashed unnecessarily) *and*
133to duplicate "default" behaviour. Basically an ENGINE_TABLE instantiation, for
134example tb_cipher.c, implements a hash-table keyed by integer "nid" values.
135These nids provide the uniquenness of an algorithm/mode - and each nid will hash
136to a potentially NULL "ENGINE_PILE". An ENGINE_PILE is essentially a list of
137pointers to ENGINEs that implement that particular 'nid'. Each "pile" uses some
138caching tricks such that requests on that 'nid' will be cached and all future
139requests will return immediately (well, at least with minimal operation) unless
140a change is made to the pile, eg. perhaps an ENGINE was unloaded. The reason is
141that an application could have support for 10 ENGINEs statically linked
142in, and the machine in question may not have any of the hardware those 10
143ENGINEs support. If each of those ENGINEs has a "des_cbc" implementation, we
144want to avoid every EVP_CIPHER_CTX setup from trying (and failing) to initialise
145each of those 10 ENGINEs. Instead, the first such request will try to do that
146and will either return (and cache) a NULL ENGINE pointer or will return a
147functional reference to the first that successfully initialised. In the latter
148case it will also cache an extra functional reference to the ENGINE as a
149"default" for that 'nid'. The caching is acknowledged by a 'uptodate' variable
150that is unset only if un/registration takes place on that pile. Ie. if
151implementations of "des_cbc" are added or removed. This behaviour can be
152tweaked; the ENGINE_TABLE_FLAG_NOINIT value can be passed to
153ENGINE_set_table_flags(), in which case the only ENGINEs that tb_cipher.c will
154try to initialise from the "pile" will be those that are already initialised
155(ie. it's simply an increment of the functional reference count, and no real
156"initialisation" will take place).
157
158RSA, DSA, DH, and RAND all have their own ENGINE_TABLE code as well, and the
159difference is that they all use an implicit 'nid' of 1. Whereas EVP_CIPHERs are
160actually qualitatively different depending on 'nid' (the "des_cbc" EVP_CIPHER is
161not an interoperable implementation of "aes_256_cbc"), RSA_METHODs are
162necessarily interoperable and don't have different flavours, only different
163implementations. In other words, the ENGINE_TABLE for RSA will either be empty,
164or will have a single ENGING_PILE hashed to by the 'nid' 1 and that pile
165represents ENGINEs that implement the single "type" of RSA there is.
166
167Cleanup - the registration and unregistration may pose questions about how
168cleanup works with the ENGINE_PILE doing all this caching nonsense (ie. when the
169application or EVP_CIPHER code releases its last reference to an ENGINE, the
170ENGINE_PILE code may still have references and thus those ENGINEs will stay
171hooked in forever). The way this is handled is via "unregistration". With these
172new ENGINE changes, an abstract ENGINE can be loaded and initialised, but that
173is an algorithm-agnostic process. Even if initialised, it will not have
174registered any of its implementations (to do so would link all class "table"
175code despite the fact the application may use only ciphers, for example). This
176is deliberately a distinct step. Moreover, registration and unregistration has
177nothing to do with whether an ENGINE is *functional* or not (ie. you can even
178register an ENGINE and its implementations without it being operational, you may
179not even have the drivers to make it operate). What actually happens with
180respect to cleanup is managed inside eng_lib.c with the "engine_cleanup_***"
181functions. These functions are internal-only and each part of ENGINE code that
182could require cleanup will, upon performing its first allocation, register a
183callback with the "engine_cleanup" code. The other part of this that makes it
184tick is that the ENGINE_TABLE instantiations (tb_***.c) use NULL as their
185initialised state. So if RSA code asks for an ENGINE and no ENGINE has
186registered an implementation, the code will simply return NULL and the tb_rsa.c
187state will be unchanged. Thus, no cleanup is required unless registration takes
188place. ENGINE_cleanup() will simply iterate across a list of registered cleanup
189callbacks calling each in turn, and will then internally delete its own storage
190(a STACK). When a cleanup callback is next registered (eg. if the cleanup() is
191part of a gracefull restart and the application wants to cleanup all state then
192start again), the internal STACK storage will be freshly allocated. This is much
193the same as the situation in the ENGINE_TABLE instantiations ... NULL is the
194initialised state, so only modification operations (not queries) will cause that
195code to have to register a cleanup.
196
197What else? The bignum callbacks and associated ENGINE functions have been
198removed for two obvious reasons; (i) there was no way to generalise them to the
199mechanism now used by RSA/DSA/..., because there's no such thing as a BIGNUM
200method, and (ii) because of (i), there was no meaningful way for library or
201application code to automatically hook and use ENGINE supplied bignum functions
202anyway. Also, ENGINE_cpy() has been removed (although an internal-only version
203exists) - the idea of providing an ENGINE_cpy() function probably wasn't a good
204one and now certainly doesn't make sense in any generalised way. Some of the
205RSA, DSA, DH, and RAND functions that were fiddled during the original ENGINE
206changes have now, as a consequence, been reverted back. This is because the
207hooking of ENGINE is now automatic (and passive, it can interally use a NULL
208ENGINE pointer to simply ignore ENGINE from then on).
209
210Hell, that should be enough for now ... comments welcome: geoff@openssl.org
278 211