Hello,
To my mind, admin tasks such as conf file customization, should be performed by admin scripts, not app running in admin mode.

With GnuWin32 sed AND echo commands, things are really simple :

stunnel.conf :
 
cert = %USERPROFILE%\.config\my.pem (windows)
output = %APPDATA%\stunnel.log (windows)

script "envsed.bat" on Windows :

cat stunnel.conf | ^
sed -r -e "s/^(.*)$/C\:\\Progra~2\\GnuWin32\\bin\\echo.EXE \1/e"

every envvar "à la windows" is expanded ....
Will work the same in Linux.

If we really modify stunnel to do that job, I recommend to (try to) use stubs for WCE trying to keep one main code, and keeping an acceptable behavior in WCE,
instead of playing with #if WCE #else etc ...

Another way to proceed is that stunnel recognizes a very small set of "pseudo-envvars", like eg we can find in samba conf files,
such as, eg, %u for current user home folder, and that it expands (or "translate") internally with its own logic (of course using system calls if needed),
but in any case, stunnel has to do some work for tokenization, something that I think dangerous :
it would not be good that stunnel expands ANY envvar, known or UNKNOWN, without being able to predict the effects on its execution.
Moreover, envars can be modified on the fly in an unpredictable way: what if stunnel reloads the conf after an envvar change ?
if it even does NOT detect the change, there may be issues ...and if it detects the change and reloads, there may be other issues...

Anyway, for the purpose of having multiple stunnel processes, running in user space, started from USER command line, it does not appear clear to me why an admin should create the USER conf files...the USER should be aware of what is he/she doing with stunnel?
and it is not clear why and HOW multiple users, logged-on on the ?same? machine, each working in USER SPACE, should run stunnel simultaneously ...

Question is also : if stunnel is running as a service, how will it deal with conf file containing ENVVARS, and what interest for this as system-wide stunnel just need one unique conf file.

Yours sincerely,
Pierre


Le 31/05/2016 18:59, Dmitry Bakshaev a écrit :


2016-05-31 17:07 GMT+04:00 Pierre Delaage <[email protected]>:
Hi,
The difference is that, on WCE, for stunnel code, it is straigthforward to access the "unique profile" stunnel.conf, WITHOUT in fact dealing with envvars,
rather than 1/ decode %VARNAME% tokens in conf file and then ask env for replacement...
well...ok..we can create stubs as well for getenv etc... but is is much more complicated.

"environment expanded config" feature is designed for the platform that support it - on WCE is not avialable - config is static text file,
and use static values in config files on other platform not prohibited : ADMIN chooses which
parameters USER can expand to USER own values or none.


For W32 platforms, communicating with a server with env vars can open issues.
example, please. every account that start stunnel has his own environment, cert, key, etc.
BUT working in "local user sandbox", folders etc...is more secure than modifying system files by everyone through envvars.
files not modified globally, only for current USER by USER values in runtime, only for specified parameters

More generally, I agree that a per user conf can be useful ONLY IF each user is able, and "directed to" start HIS/HER STUNNEL by HAND, in a user space process.
yes. one of our scenarios.

But to achieve this....stunnel is ALREADY ready to go by using the command line like this "stunnel myownconfig.conf", of course having "my" own copy of stunnel executable.

So there is no real need to have an embeddef feature in stunnel for conf file customization per user.

And, once again, as conf file are just "text files", it is quite easy to create a bunch of such from a template, by text editiong tools : sed on win32 is really powerful, or win32 perl engine, or whatever scripting language you prefer

this feature makes it unnecessary to copy config to every user and edit files manually or using sed/perl.
not need ADMIN intervention after adding new USER.
adding/replace service/port not need regenerate all users config - one centralized config.
this is the primary purpose - ADMIN make one config as template for all users.

for example server scenario: we has multiple stunnel instanses on gentoo linux
and i can configure on template:
output = /var/log/stunnel/stunnel_${SVCNAME}.log
each instance has its own log. (SVCNAME variable contains instance name from init.d startup scripts)