Which gss calls may block on IO

[Isaac Boukris]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2017 at 6:53 PM, Greg Hudson <ghudson at mit.edu> wrote:
> On 04/14/2017 08:26 AM, Isaac Boukris wrote:
>> If I only acquire credentials for krb5 mech, can I assume that
>> gss_accpet would not block on IO?
>
> I think that's true, assuming the keytab and profile and /etc/gss/mech
> file aren't on a network filesystem.  In the future we might have
> pluggable keytab types, at which time a keytab module might do blocking
> I/O, but that would be an exotic case.
>
>> Is there any information available on which gss calls may block on IO
>> and which not?
>
> I'm not aware of a writeup.  From memory: gss_acquire_cred() and
> gss_init_sec_context() can block on either DNS or AS/TGS operations.
> The per-message functions shouldn't block.  gss_inquire_cred() can be
> less trivial that it sounds (because it can force a resolution of which
> ccache to use which would ordinarily be delayed until init_sec_context)
> but I don't think it does network I/O (unless there's a ccselect plugin
> module which does so, or $HOME/.k5identity is on a network filesystem).
> The other inquire functions shouldn't block.  The delete/release
> functions shouldn't block.

Thanks for this information.
fwiw I also noticed rfc 2743 has the following comment about
gss_{init,accept} calls only: "this call may block pending network
interactions".