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<!DOCTYPE chapter SYSTEM "chapter.dtd">
<chapter>
<header>
<copyright>
<year>2000</year><year>2011</year>
<holder>Ericsson AB. All Rights Reserved.</holder>
</copyright>
<legalnotice>
The contents of this file are subject to the Erlang Public License,
Version 1.1, (the "License"); you may not use this file except in
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Erlang Public License along with this software. If not, it can be
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Software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS"
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<title>Using SSL for Erlang Distribution</title>
<prepared>P Nyblom</prepared>
<responsible></responsible>
<docno></docno>
<approved></approved>
<checked></checked>
<date>2003-04-01</date>
<rev>B</rev>
<file>ssl_distribution.xml</file>
</header>
<p>This chapter describes how the Erlang distribution can use
SSL to get additional verification and security.
</p>
<section>
<title>Introduction</title>
<p>The Erlang distribution can in theory use almost any connection
based protocol as bearer. A module that implements the protocol
specific parts of the connection setup is however needed. The
default distribution module is <c>inet_tcp_dist</c> which is
included in the Kernel application. When starting an
Erlang node distributed, <c>net_kernel</c> uses this module to
setup listen ports and connections. </p>
<p>In the SSL application there is an additional distribution
module, <c>inet_tls_dist</c> which can be used as an
alternative. All distribution connections will be using SSL and
all participating Erlang nodes in a distributed system must use
this distribution module.</p>
<p>The security level depends on the parameters provided to the
SSL connection setup. Erlang node cookies are however always
used, as they can be used to differentiate between two different
Erlang networks.</p>
<p>Setting up Erlang distribution over SSL involves some simple but
necessary steps:</p>
<list type="bulleted">
<item>Building boot scripts including the SSL application</item>
<item>Specifying the distribution module for net_kernel</item>
<item>Specifying security options and other SSL options</item>
</list>
<p>The rest of this chapter describes the above mentioned steps in
more detail.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Building boot scripts including the SSL application</title>
<p>Boot scripts are built using the <c>systools</c> utility in the
SASL application. Refer to the SASL documentations
for more information on systools. This is only an example of
what can be done.</p>
<p>The simplest boot script possible includes only the Kernel
and STDLIB applications. Such a script is located in the
Erlang distributions bin directory. The source for the script
can be found under the Erlang installation top directory under
<c><![CDATA[releases/<OTP version>/start_clean.rel]]></c>. Copy that
script to another location (and preferably another name)
and add the applications crypto, public_key and SSL with their current version numbers
after the STDLIB application.</p>
<p>An example .rel file with SSL added may look like this:</p>
<code type="none">
{release, {"OTP APN 181 01","R15A"}, {erts, "5.9"},
[{kernel,"2.15"},
{stdlib,"1.18"},
{crypto, "2.0.3"},
{public_key, "0.12"},
{ssl, "5.0"}
]}.
</code>
<p>Note that the version numbers surely will differ in your system.
Whenever one of the applications included in the script is
upgraded, the script has to be changed.</p>
<p>Assuming the above .rel file is stored in a file
<c>start_ssl.rel</c> in the current directory, a boot script
can be built like this:</p>
<code type="none">
1> systools:make_script("start_ssl",[]). </code>
<p>There will now be a file <c>start_ssl.boot</c> in the current
directory. To test the boot script, start Erlang with the
<c>-boot</c> command line parameter specifying this boot script
(with its full path but without the <c>.boot</c> suffix), in
Unix it could look like this:</p>
<p></p>
<code type="none"><![CDATA[
$ erl -boot /home/me/ssl/start_ssl
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.0
Eshell V5.0 (abort with ^G)
1> whereis(ssl_manager).
<0.41.0> ]]></code>
<p>The <c>whereis</c> function call verifies that the SSL
application is really started.</p>
<p>As an alternative to building a bootscript, one can explicitly
add the path to the SSL <c>ebin</c> directory on the command
line. This is done with the command line option <c>-pa</c>. This
works as the SSL application does not need to be started for the
distribution to come up, as a clone of the SSL application is
hooked into the kernel application, so as long as the
SSL applications code can be reached, the distribution will
start. The <c>-pa</c> method is only recommended for testing
purposes.</p>
<note><p>Note that the clone of the SSL application is necessary to
enable the use of the SSL code in such an early bootstage as
needed to setup the distribution, however this will make it
impossible to soft upgrade the SSL application.</p></note>
</section>
<section>
<title>Specifying distribution module for net_kernel</title>
<p>The distribution module for SSL is named <c>inet_tls_dist</c>
and is specified on the command line with the <c>-proto_dist</c>
option. The argument to <c>-proto_dist</c> should be the module
name without the <c>_dist</c> suffix, so this distribution
module is specified with <c>-proto_dist inet_tls</c> on the
command line.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Extending the command line from above gives us the following:</p>
<code type="none">
$ erl -boot /home/me/ssl/start_ssl -proto_dist inet_tls </code>
<p>For the distribution to actually be started, we need to give
the emulator a name as well:</p>
<code type="none">
$ erl -boot /home/me/ssl/start_ssl -proto_dist inet_tls -sname ssl_test
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.0 [source]
Eshell V5.0 (abort with ^G)
(ssl_test@myhost)1> </code>
<p>Note however that a node started in this way will refuse to talk
to other nodes, as no ssl parameters are supplied
(see below).</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Specifying SSL options</title> <p>For SSL to work, at least
a public key and certificate needs to be specified for the server
side. In the following example the PEM-files consists of two
entries the servers certificate and its private key.</p>
<p>On the <c>erl</c> command line one can specify options that the
SSL distribution will add when creating a socket.</p>
<p>One can specify the simpler SSL options certfile, keyfile,
password, cacertfile, verify, reuse_sessions,
secure_renegotiation, depth, hibernate_after and ciphers (use old
string format) by adding the prefix server_ or client_ to the
option name. The server can also take the options dhfile and
fail_if_no_peer_cert (also prefixed).
<c>client_</c>-prfixed options are used when the distribution initiates a
connection to another node and the <c>server_</c>-prefixed options are used
when accepting a connection from a remote node. </p>
<p> More complex options such as verify_fun are not available at
the moment but a mechanism to handle such options may be added in
a future release. </p>
<p> Raw socket options such as packet and size must not be specified on
the command line</p>.
<p>The command line argument for specifying the SSL options is named
<c>-ssl_dist_opt</c> and should be followed by pairs of
SSL options and their values. The <c>-ssl_dist_opt</c> argument can
be repeated any number of times.</p>
<p>An example command line would now look something like this
(line breaks in the command are for readability,
they should not be there when typed):</p>
<code type="none">
$ erl -boot /home/me/ssl/start_ssl -proto_dist inet_tls
-ssl_dist_opt server_certfile "/home/me/ssl/erlserver.pem"
-ssl_dist_opt server_secure_renegotiation true client_secure_renegotiate true
-sname ssl_test
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.0 [source]
Eshell V5.0 (abort with ^G)
(ssl_test@myhost)1> </code>
<p>A node started in this way will be fully functional, using SSL
as the distribution protocol.</p>
</section>
<section>
<title>Setting up environment to always use SSL</title>
<p>A convenient way to specify arguments to Erlang is to use the
<c>ERL_FLAGS</c> environment variable. All the flags needed to
use SSL distribution can be specified in that variable and will
then be interpreted as command line arguments for all
subsequent invocations of Erlang.</p>
<p></p>
<p>In a Unix (Bourne) shell it could look like this (line breaks for
readability, they should not be there when typed):</p>
<code type="none">
$ ERL_FLAGS="-boot /home/me/ssl/start_ssl -proto_dist inet_tls
-ssl_dist_opt server_certfile /home/me/ssl/erlserver.pem
-ssl_dist_opt server_secure_renegotiation true client_secure_renegotiate true"
$ export ERL_FLAGS
$ erl -sname ssl_test
Erlang (BEAM) emulator version 5.0 [source]
Eshell V5.0 (abort with ^G)
(ssl_test@myhost)1> init:get_arguments().
[{root,["/usr/local/erlang"]},
{progname,["erl "]},
{sname,["ssl_test"]},
{boot,["/home/me/ssl/start_ssl"]},
{proto_dist,["inet_tls"]},
{ssl_dist_opt,["server_certfile","/home/me/ssl/erlserver.pem"]},
{ssl_dist_opt,["server_secure_renegotiation","true",
"client_secure_renegotiate","true"]
{home,["/home/me"]}] </code>
<p>The <c>init:get_arguments()</c> call verifies that the correct
arguments are supplied to the emulator. </p>
</section>
</chapter>
