[stunnel-users] Linux FIPS compile libary question

Luis Rodrigo Gallardo Cruz rodrigo at nul-unu.com
Thu Apr 10 19:24:44 CEST 2008


On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 12:44:39PM -0400, Joe Kemp wrote:
> I am compiling stunnel on Centos 5 that has a regular Openssl 0.9.8b rpm installed.  I have put my FIPS openssl in /usr/local/sslfips112.

> FIPSLD_CC=gcc /usr/local/sslfips112/bin/fipsld -g -O2 -Wall -Wshadow
> -Wcast-align -Wpointer-arith -I/usr/local/sslfips112/include -o
> stunnel file.o client.o log.o options.o protocol.o network.o
> resolver.o ssl.o ctx.o verify.o sthreads.o stunnel.o auth.o pty.o
> libwrap.o -lldap -lz -ldl -lutil -lnsl -lpthread
> -L/usr/local/sslfips112/lib -lssl -lcrypto
 
> This builds a stunnel that seems to run fine.  During startup it
> says "stunnel is in FIPS mode."  But if I run "ldd stunnel" it shows
> it needs /lib/libssl.so.6.  While stunnel is running lsof shows it
> has that library open also.  Why does my FIPS stunnel build still
> use the 0.9.8b shared library?  Shouldn't all of the ssl
> dependencies been handled by the static FIPS openssl library during
> linking?  The same issue exists for libcrypt.

I've never tried to compile a FIPS binary, so this might all be
wrong. Grains of salt recommended.

The basic issue is that -lssl doesn't just mean "use libssl.so to
resolve symbols while linking". It *also* means "store libssl.so in
the table of needed libraries in the final executable". Mostly
because the linker has no way of knowing _a priori_ if the executable
will eventually try to access some symbol from the library that was
not evident during the link (think dlopen)

Adding -Wl,--as-needed to the linker line *ought* to solve this, by
telling the linker to only add entries to the needed table for dynamic
libraries whose symbols are explicitely required during the
link. Beware that libtool likes to reorder args to the linker, and it
seems to like putting this option at the end, where it becomes
useles. There's a patch at http://bugs.debian.org/347650 that might
help with that, but it's not quite for the faint-hearted.

Good luck.
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