libgnutls-openssl and real openssl conflict

[Nils Philippsen]

On Tue, 2008-08-26 at 08:39 +1000, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-08-25 at 20:04 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > The story begins here:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=446860
> > 
> > The problem is, or I believe it to be, that when an application uses 
> > libgnutls-openssl (meant for easy use of porting openssl programs to gnutls) 
> > for example because of the openssl license issues, and then a library uses the 
> > real openssl (for example glibc through nss_ldap) then in the nss_ldap example, 
> > the layer dlopen's nss_ldap starts using the openssl symbols from gnutls 
> > instead of those from openssl, but they are not ABI compatible -> boom.
> > 
> > Luckily the list of libgnutls-openssl users seems small:
> > 
> > [hans at localhost src]$ repoquery -q --whatrequires 
> > 'libgnutls-openssl.so.26()(64bit)'
> > mcabber-0:0.9.7-1.fc10.x86_64
> > gnutls-0:2.4.1-1.fc10.x86_64
> > gnutls-devel-0:2.4.1-1.fc10.x86_64
> > zoneminder-0:1.23.3-1.fc10.x86_64
> > gkrellm-0:2.3.1-4.fc10.x86_64
> > 
> > So only 3 programs are affected, given that the same may happen when any used 
> > library uses the real openssl and the application or any other library uses 
> > gnutls-openssl, I would like to suggest the removal of libgnutls-openssl from 
> > Fedora, as long as we have this openssl libraries mess (which we unfortunately 
> > do) we should make sure that the various ssl libraries do not have symbol 
> > clashes, as changes are that through a mix of libraries an application may be 
> > using 2 (or even 3) different ssl libs.
> > 
> > So whats your 2 cents on this?
> 
> How does the NSS (Mozilla SSL) OpenSSL wrapper avoid this problem?

Completely uninformed guess: by using macros or other techniques to add
a prefix to the symbols that end up in the binary?

Nils
-- 
Nils Philippsen      "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase 
Red Hat               a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty
nils at redhat.com       nor Safety."  --  Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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