Bug 712295

Summary:	/usr/bin/certwatch unnecessary
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	JW <ohtmvyyn>
Component:	crypto-utils	Assignee:	Joe Orton <jorton>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	19	CC:	emaldona, jorton, philipp
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Reopened
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2014-01-27 10:49:58 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description JW 2011-06-10 07:31:27 UTC

Description of problem:
/usr/bin/certwatch should not exists ... there are sufficient command-line tools to do the job

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
crypto-utils-2.4.1-27

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. file /usr/bin/certwatch
  
Actual results:
1. /usr/bin/certwatch: ELF 32-bit LSB executable

Expected results:
1. /usr/bin/certwatch: ERROR: No such file or directory

Additional info:
There was once an operating system named Unix where the concept was that tools were simple, reusable, and the output of one command could easily be fed into another to achieve the desired result.

The certwatch program seems to be mainly used by crond via a script in /etc/cron.daily/certwach.

It would be just as easy to insert commands in /etc/cron.daily/certwatch such as:

expiry=`openssl x509 -noout -enddate -in xxxx.crt | perl -MDate::Parse -ne 'print str2time(+(split(/=/,$_,2))[1]);'`

and perform some simple integer comparisons with:

now=`date +%s`

Why go to the trouble of creating a binary to perform this trivial task, especially as there is already a script around /usr/bin/certwatch?

Comment 1 Elio Maldonado Batiz 2011-07-06 16:17:20 UTC

How shall we deal with the case Apache uses mod_nss and the certs are in the nss database instead of flat files.

Comment 2 JW 2011-07-08 14:29:31 UTC

Step 1. Extract the certs from nss database
Step 2. Check the certs with openssl

Comment 3 Joe Orton 2012-04-23 19:36:31 UTC

Patches welcome.

Comment 4 Fedora End Of Life 2012-08-07 16:37:44 UTC

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Comment 5 JW 2012-08-08 00:05:22 UTC

still a problem

Comment 6 Fedora End Of Life 2013-07-04 05:56:28 UTC

This message is a reminder that Fedora 17 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 17. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 
'version' of '17'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 17's end of life.

Bug Reporter:  Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that 
we may not be able to fix it before Fedora 17 is end of life. If you 
would still like  to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it 
against a later version  of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 
'version' to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 17's end of life.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 7 Philip Prindeville 2013-10-28 17:02:03 UTC

(In reply to JW from comment #0)

> Why go to the trouble of creating a binary to perform this trivial task,
> especially as there is already a script around /usr/bin/certwatch?

Because (a) there are a lot of system administrators who aren't as up on security as they should be, (b) because the cost of expired certificates is significant enough to justify extra tooling to make sure it doesn't happen, (c) because the security of the Internet in general is weak enough that we should go for all the low-hanging fruit that we can to make it more secure.

Comment 8 Joe Orton 2014-01-27 10:49:58 UTC

Again absent patches to implement this better -> WONTFIX.