[Freeipa-devel] [PATCH] 383 Check subject name encoding in ipa-cacert-manage renew

[Martin Kosek]

On 12/09/2014 01:56 PM, Jan Cholasta wrote:
> Dne 5.12.2014 v 12:01 Jan Cholasta napsal(a):
>> Dne 5.12.2014 v 11:43 Martin Kosek napsal(a):
>>> On 12/05/2014 11:34 AM, Jan Cholasta wrote:
>>>> Dne 5.12.2014 v 09:03 Martin Kosek napsal(a):
>>>>> On 12/04/2014 09:36 AM, Jan Cholasta wrote:
>>>>>> +            if x509.get_der_subject(cert, x509.DER) != der_subject:
>>>>>> +                raise admintool.ScriptError("Subject name encoding
>>>>>> mismatch")
>>>>>
>>>>> I think we can expect this to be a pretty common error, given this is
>>>>> the default behavior of Microsoft Certificate Services. I would thus
>>>>> like to make the error message more juicy.
>>>>>
>>>>> We need to make sure we offer some pointers for these users or they
>>>>> will
>>>>> just blame IPA for screwing up. So, the information I wrote
>>>>>
>>>>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1129558#c11
>>>>>
>>>>> need to somehow get to the error message as a potential/likely root
>>>>> cause of the problem. Whether you write it in the error message itself
>>>>> or update the design page and just insert a link is up to you.
>>>>>
>>>>> Martin
>>>>
>>>> I would rather document this and have users read the documentation,
>>>> which they
>>>> should do anyway when something goes wrong. There are many errors in
>>>> IPA which
>>>> are common and users may blame IPA for them and I don't see what makes
>>>> this one
>>>> so special that it should require a special treatment.
>>>
>>> I saw several reasons:
>>> - Certificate&installation error are more common than the others and
>>> users are usually quite lost in what to do with them.
>>> - In this case, we know by 90% probability what is the root cause
>>> - It will block one of the main use cases for the new CA renewal tool
>>> and people will likely hit it as MS CAs is one of the most common CAs
>>> and this is it's default behavior.
>>>
>>> Giving more details in this case will not hurt us, but benefit users. So
>>> I still do not see the harm.
>>
>> I do not see a harm either, my point is that we should probably point
>> the user to documentation when *anything* in *any* script goes wrong,
>> not just when some arbitrarily cherry-picked error occurs.
>>
>>>
>>>> Anyway, I have created
>>>> <http://www.freeipa.org/page/Troubleshooting#External_CA_renewal_with_ipa-cacert-manage_fails>.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Good. Do you plan to reference the section or enhance the error message?
>>
>> I plan to reference <http://www.freeipa.org/page/Troubleshooting>.
> 
> See the attached patch (385).

I think the reference for the Troubleshooting page should be more narrow so
that people only see the URL only for the cases we give specific advise for.
Otherwise I assume they will just ignore the page if they do not find the
advise for other errors.

Other idea would be to give reference to the article when the actual CSR is
generated - as a heads up.

Martin