Hello, I work on an application for Microsoft which uses c-ares to
perform DNS lookups. We have made some minor changes to the library over
time, and would like to contribute these back to the project in case
they are useful more widely. This PR adds a new channel init flag,
described below.
Please let me know if I can include any more information to make this PR
better/easier for you to review. Thanks!
**Summary**
When initializing a channel with `ares_init_options()`, if there are no
nameservers available (because `ARES_OPT_SERVERS` is not used and
`/etc/resolv.conf` is either empty or not available) then a default
local named server will be added to the channel.
However in some applications a local named server will never be
available. In this case, all subsequent queries on the channel will
fail.
If we know this ahead of time, then it may be preferred to fail channel
initialization directly rather than wait for the queries to fail. This
gives better visibility, since we know that the failure is due to
missing servers rather than something going wrong with the queries.
This PR adds a new flag `ARES_FLAG_NO_DFLT_SVR`, to indicate that a
default local named server should not be added to a channel in this
scenario. Instead, a new error `ARES_EINITNOSERVER` is returned and
initialization fails.
**Testing**
I have added 2 new FV tests:
- `ContainerNoDfltSvrEmptyInit` to test that initialization fails when
no nameservers are available and the flag is set.
- `ContainerNoDfltSvrFullInit` to test that initialization still
succeeds when the flag is set but other nameservers are available.
Existing FVs are all passing.
**Documentation**
I have had a go at manually updating the docs to describe the new
flag/error, but couldn't see any contributing guidance about testing
this. Please let me know if you'd like anything more here.
---------
Fix By: Oliver Welsh (@oliverwelsh)
The parser for the sortlist has been rewritten to use the ares__buf_*() functions. This also resolves some known bugs in accepting invalid sortlist entries which should have caused parse failures.
Fixes Bug: #501
Fix By: Brad House (@bradh352)
Some environments may send router advertisements on a link setting their link-local (fe80::/10) address as a valid DNS server to the remote system. This will cause a DNS entry to be created like `fe80::1%iface`, since all link-local network interfaces are technically part of the same /10 subnet, it must be told what interface to send packets through explicitly if there are multiple physical interfaces.
This PR adds support for the %iface modifier when setting DNS servers via `/etc/resolv.conf` as well as via `ares_set_servers_csv()`.
For MacOS and iOS it is assumed that libresolve will set the `sin6_scope_id` and should be supported, but my test systems don't seem to read the Router Advertisement for RDNSS link-local. Specifying the link-local dns server on MacOS via adig has been tested and confirmed working.
For Windows, this is similar to MacOS in that the system doesn't seem to honor the RDNSS RA, but specifying manually has been tested to work.
At this point, Android support does not exist.
Fixes Bug #462
Supersedes PR #463
Fix By: Brad House (@bradh352) and Serhii Purik (@sergvpurik)
c-ares parses only antique version of options for timeout and number of retries from resolv.conf (`retrans` and `retry` are missing in modern documentation https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/resolv.conf.5.html).
I add support of `attempts` and `timeout` options
Fix By: Ignat (@Kontakter)
The retry timeout values were using a fixed calculation which could cause multiple simultaneous queries to timeout and retry at the exact same time. If a DNS server is throttling requests, this could cause the issue to never self-resolve due to all requests recurring at the same instance again.
This PR also creates a maximum timeout option to make sure the random value selected does not exceed this value.
Fix By: Ignat (@Kontakter)
`ares_channel` is defined as `typedef struct ares_channeldata *ares_channel;`. The problem with this, is it embeds the pointer into the typedef, which means an `ares_channel` can never be declared as `const` as if you write `const ares_channel channel`, that expands to `struct ares_channeldata * const ares_channel` and not `const struct ares_channeldata *channel`.
We will now typedef `ares_channel_t` as `typedef struct ares_channeldata ares_channel_t;`, so if you write `const ares_channel_t *channel`, it properly expands to `const struct ares_channeldata *channel`.
We are maintaining the old typedef for API compatibility with existing integrations, and due to typedef expansion this should not even cause any compiler warnings for existing code. There are no ABI implications with this change. I could be convinced to keep existing public functions as `ares_channel` if a sufficient argument exists, but internally we really need make this change for modern best practices.
This change will allow us to internally use `const ares_channel_t *` where appropriate. Whether or not we decide to change any public interfaces to use `const` may require further discussion on if there might be ABI implications (I don't think so, but I'm also not 100% sure what a compiler internally does with `const` when emitting machine code ... I think more likely ABI implications would occur going the opposite direction).
FYI, This PR was done via a combination of sed and clang-format, the only manual code change was the addition of the new typedef, and a couple doc fixes :)
Fix By: Brad House (@bradh352)
This PR makes the server list a dynamic sorted list of servers. The sort order is [ consecutive failures, system config index ]. The server list can be updated via ares_set_servers_*(). Any queries currently directed to servers that are no longer in the list will be automatically re-queued to a different server.
Also, any time a failure occurs on the server, the sort order of the servers will be updated so that the one with the fewest consecutive failures is chosen for the next query that goes on the wire, this way bad or non-responsive servers are automatically isolated.
Since the server list is now dynamic, the tracking of query failures per server has been removed and instead is relying on the server sort order as previously described. This simplifies the logic while also reducing the amount of memory required per query. However, because of this dynamic nature, it may not be easy to determine the server attempt order for enqueued queries if there have been any failures.
If using the ARES_OPT_ROTATE, this is now implemented to be a random selection of the configured servers. Since the server list is dynamic, its not possible to go to the next server as configuration could have changed between queries or attempts for the same query.
Finally, this PR moved some existing functions into new files to logically separate them.
This should address issues #550 and #440, while also setting the framework to implement #301. #301 needs a little more effort since it configures things other than the servers themselves (domains, search, sortlist, lookups), which need to make sure they can be safely updated.
Fix By: Brad House (@bradh352)
All files have their licence and copyright information clearly
identifiable. If not in the file header, they are set separately in
.reuse/dep5.
All used license texts are provided in LICENSES/
In ares_set_sortlist, it calls config_sortlist(..., sortstr) to parse
the input str and initialize a sortlist configuration.
However, ares_set_sortlist has not any checks about the validity of the input str.
It is very easy to create an arbitrary length stack overflow with the unchecked
`memcpy(ipbuf, str, q-str);` and `memcpy(ipbufpfx, str, q-str);`
statements in the config_sortlist call, which could potentially cause severe
security impact in practical programs.
This commit add necessary check for `ipbuf` and `ipbufpfx` which avoid the
potential stack overflows.
fixes#496
Fix By: @hopper-vul
The rc4 function iterates over a buffer of size buffer_len who's maximum
value is INT_MAX with a counter of type short that is not guaranteed to
have maximum size INT_MAX.
In circumstances where short is narrower than int and where buffer_len
is larger than the maximum value of a short, it may be possible to loop
infinitely as counter will overflow and never be greater than or equal
to buffer_len.
The solution is to make the comparison be between types of equal width.
This commit defines counter as an int.
Fix By: Fionn Fitzmaurice (@fionn)