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IrcMeetings

Basic info

  • Time: Wednesday 24 April 2024 at 13:00 CEST (11:00 UTC)
  • Place: #openvpn-meeting channel on LiberaChat IRC network

Topics

Current topics

  • New, closed: OpenSSL 1.0.2 removal from OpenVPN 2.7

    • Currently plaisthos is still supporting OpenSSL 1.0.2 because of Access Server still releasing on CentOS7/Red Hat7.
    • Since we are dropping those platforms on Access Server, there appears to be no reason to keep supporting it.
    • There were no objections to removing openssl 1.0.2 support from OpenVPN 2.7.

  • New: Discussion related to DNS IV flag

    • The implementation of the dns option deviates somewhat from the original specification.
    • d12fk wants to discuss a possible solution using another IV flag.
    • A flag such as IV_PROTO_DNS_OPTION_V2 would be acceptable, as of OpenVPN 2.6.11.
    • IV_PROTO_DNS_OPTION could be renamed to IV_PROTO_DNS_OPTION_OLD and marked as 'do not send'.

  • Updated: forums topics

    • ecrist still working on forums. waiting on ecrist to move things around.
    • ecrist requests that cloudflare be removed again. that's not really something that we want to do as we lose a lot of protection.
    • rob0 and novaflash would like to assist in solving this problem. they would need root access to the VM. perhaps djpig can arrange this?
    • Plan is to soon switch URLs so new forum is on forums.openvpn.net and old forums is on archive address.
      • email confirmation on registration was suggested.
      • mod permissions, guide, hard or soft delete (chuck board?), what to do with GDPR, etc. (write it down and actually make it available to mods, maybe a hidden topic)
      • access for mods to logs so one can see what others did.

  • Updated: mattock topics

    • PR created for the --dev null test suite. Fixed some issues based on feedback in #openvpn-devel.
    • Documentation here: dev-null-test-suite

  • Security mailing list procedure can stand improvement

    • company will improve process on picking up tasks from security mailing list in the next week or so.
    • The idea being that community guys will continue doing their thing as usual, and company guys monitor the list for company-related items and follow up on those.
    • The idea of an NDA is also revived. But it was made clear internally that we need like a one-page simple NDA for community members, not the unnecessarily restrictive one originally suggested by legal guys.

  • DCO and Linux upstreaming, API change

    • Upstreaming DCO to Linux is proceeding, it is in review stage at the moment.
    • ordex will send a patchset v3 based on feedback received today.
    • There will be an API change that makes it incompatible with the current implementation.
    • A graceful solution to that was already discussed and in motion. giaan will be working on this.
      • (in a nutshell, make OpenVPN understand old and new API, DKMS and kernel versions both will then use new API, then we drop old API)

  • donation collection

    • From earlier exploration it is clear that setting up a legal entity is not worth the expense at this point. We're just starting out with donations.
    • What we can do is start out with an existing company that can collect the money and puts it to good community use. ordex volunteers to take this on.
    • There are some options to consider. There may be existing solutions that we want to consider.
    • PayPal seems overly expensive with all their fees.
    • Stripe could be worth considering for credit card processing.
    • GitHub Sponsors was mentioned as a possible solution, this is worth investigating.
    • Open Collective was also mentioned, that needs some investigating how that exactly would work for us.

  • OpenVPN community meetup 2024

    • Naming: We decided to rename from 'Hackathon' to 'OpenVPN community meetup'. This has a more open spirit to it.
    • Where: Karlsruhe, Germany. Meeting room location to be determined.
    • When: At the moment tentatively set to 20-22 September 2024.
    • Who: We'll do an open invitation to openvpn-devel mailing list, but also CC: specifically past attendees and people of interest.
    • Shirts: There is plenty of time still to prepare a shirt design.
    • There's a wiki page up now where we can coordinate: CommunityMeetup2024

  • website release process

    • Waiting for faster way to update community downloads and security advisories on main site.
    • Again postponed due to issues. Now planned for this week. We'll see.

  • Status of SBOM

    • There was a discussion between MaxF and djpig and others.
    • For OpenVPN2 / OpenVPN-NL, there is not much overlap, as OpenVPN2 doesn't ship much in terms of libraries, but OpenVPN-NL does.
    • The interesting use-case for an SBOM is really the OpenVPN Windows GUI client.

  • status of trac/wiki

    • No progress since last meeting.
    • This will probably have to wait until "--dev null" is done
    • Should have access controls so only approved members can edit.

  • Tunnelcrack progress

    • Current status: when mitigations start appearing we will mention them in meeting notes.

  • Static-key mini how-to is outdated.

    • This page is outdated badly: Static-key mini how-to
    • company will send this to tech writer to redo based on example-fingerprint info and also retain a link to that GitHub doc.
    • having a simple guide online will help adoption.

  • OpenVPN 2.6 performance results.

    • tests should cover: gre, ipsec, userland, dco
    • linux, freebsd, windows
    • requires time to be dedicated to doing this, when time available will do it.

  • What's going on with new taskbar icons?

  • software code signing topic

    • company switched EV code signing to cloudhsm, this is same cert type we use for driver signing, is also suitable for binary signing.
    • in future we could possibly switch community to that same key. saves having to maintain 2 different keys.
    • depends on how hard/easy it is to access company key signing thingee from community infrastructure.
    • also no high priority at the moment, we have a working solution now.

  • Management interface documentation on main website will be updated with info from doc/management-notes.txt

    • novaflash will pick this up at some point.

Mattock topics

--dev null server testing

Latest status in [ServerSideTestingImprovementPlan]. Additional details in dev-null-test-suite. Current PoC code is available in mattock's "dev_null" branch. A good starting point is t_server_null.sh.

Potential next steps:

  • Expand the test suite
  • Integrate into Buildbot (i.e. get to production)
  • Support multiple client versions (depends on Buildbot integration)

Git commit history needs to be cleaned up and there may be other small fixes / improvements here and there to be done:

  • Enable disabling the test suite (requires root so we can't run it by default)

Debian/Ubuntu snapshot publishing

  • In a previous meeting we agreed to publish snapshot Debian/Ubuntu packages on build.openvpn.net
  • The tool to use to publish is aptly
  • aptly does not have direct support for running commands (e.g. rsync, scp) after publishing packages, e.g. to a local filesystem on the buildmaster
    • Option 1 (hacky): use inotifywait with rsync or scp to copy the published repo to build.openvpn.net
    • Option 2 (less hacky): use NFS to publish "directly" to build.openvpn.net
    • Both options require a fair amount of tinkering
  • Mattock moved this forward a bit at the buildbot end (get the files out from workers)
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