RFC: Proposal: Install a /etc/ssl/cert.pem by default?

[Paul Hoffman]

On Jul 2, 2014, at 4:45 PM, Xin Li <delphij at delphij.net> wrote:

> Currently, FreeBSD does not install a default /etc/ssl/cert.pem
> because we do not maintain one ourselves.  We do, however, provide a
> port, security/ca_root_nss, which have an option to install a symbolic
> link as /etc/ssl/cert.pem -> /usr/local/share/certs/ca-root-nss.crt,
> which is not the default option.
> 
> This become a problem when applications, e.g. fetch(8), have grown the
> support of doing certificate validation.  I think now it makes sense
> to have a default cert.pem installed with the base system.
> 
> So my proposal would be:
> 
> 1. Import a set of trusted root certificates, and install if
> MK_OPENSSL is yes, to /usr/share/misc/ca-root-freebsd.pem;
> 
> 2. In src/etc/Makefile, automatically create a symbolic link if it's
> not already present in ${DESTDIR}/etc/ssl;
> 
> 3. Teach mergemaster(8) and other similar applications to create the
> symbolic link on demand;
> 
> 4. Change the install/deinstall behavior of security/ca_root_nss:
>    ETCSYMLINK checked: If /etc/ssl/cert.pem exists, back it up on
> install then overwrite with new symlink, and restore on deinstall.
>    ETCSYMLINK unchecked: If /etc/ssl/cert.pem do not pre-exist,
> install new a symlink; on deinstall, if
> /usr/share/misc/ca-root-freebsd.pem exists, replace the symlink with a
> symlink to there, or remove if the file does not exist.
> 
> Comments/objections?

It seems like a good plan. As long as people who have a different trust list than Mozilla can easily implement their own trust plan, it's fine, and this brings a lot of ease-of-use to the ports, particularly to common ones like wget.

--Paul Hoffman
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