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To: Wez Furlong <kingwez@gmail.com>,  internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Moving Socket extension to PECL
From: maurice@iceblog.de (Maurice)

Hi Wez,

>> In my first tests I also included support for streams (using
>> stream_select) in order to support SSL/TLS enabled connections. However,
>> the SSL transport layer in the Stream "extension" is totally screwed up
>> if you use asynchronous socket streams.
> 
> That's the first I've heard about this; I've been using it in this
> fashion successfully
> for some time.

Normal (synchronous) connections are working just fine - no problem 
here. Have you really tried SSL with non-blocking streams? It works 
_sometimes_ (depends on the timing/server/etc.), but not always.
I've checked the source code and openssl SSL_* calls are not used the 
way they should be in non-blocking mode.

I'll prepare a test case later...


>> That's why I started extending the socket extension with socket_ssl_*
>> functions that use the openssl extension (and thus are only available if
>> PHP is compiled with openssl support). I will provide a patch for that
>> once it's complete and out of beta status.
> 
> The problem with ext/sockets is that it is old, unmaintained, buggy,
> and is not tied into the streams layer.

Buggy? Well, it used to be really buggy some years ago, but I think it's 
  rather stable now. Sockets are always a little bit problematic because 
they are not the same on all operating systems, but at least on Linux 
and Windows I don't have any problems.

What if I would start maintaining the sockets extension? I think PHP 
should have some low-level connection stuff built-in.
If you really think of moving ext/sockets to PECL I might as well 
concentrate on fixing the SSL/crypto problem in non-blocking streams.
It's just that streams aren't so talkative regarding error messages...


>> Anyway, the Stream-SSL part has to be fixed _before_ moving the socket
>> extension to PECL.
> 
> The first step is opening a bug report with details on how to
> reproduce the problems that you've hinted at:

Yeah, I'm going to do that. I started with a bug (crashes PHP on Windows 
XP) regarding the streams extension in November. It's assigned, but no 
action has been taken yet: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=39396
I see, it's not a "major" bug, but it crashes PHP and might (_might_) be 
used to inject code (haven't checked that).

Maurice.