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authorEelco Dolstra <eelco.dolstra@logicblox.com>2014-01-08T14·23+0100
committerEelco Dolstra <eelco.dolstra@logicblox.com>2014-01-08T14·42+0100
commit0fdf4da0e979f992db75cc17376e455ddc5a96d8 (patch)
treed80846735c2ea6f0dc3307e94d9edc2087686896 /corepkgs
parent405434e084fa994cc957249db7787731e9311fa8 (diff)
Support cryptographically signed binary caches
NAR info files in binary caches can now have a cryptographic signature
that Nix will verify before using the corresponding NAR file.

To create a private/public key pair for signing and verifying a binary
cache, do:

  $ openssl genrsa -out ./cache-key.sec 2048
  $ openssl rsa -in ./cache-key.sec -pubout > ./cache-key.pub

You should also come up with a symbolic name for the key, such as
"cache.example.org-1".  This will be used by clients to look up the
public key.  (It's a good idea to number keys, in case you ever need
to revoke/replace one.)

To create a binary cache signed with the private key:

  $ nix-push --dest /path/to/binary-cache --key ./cache-key.sec --key-name cache.example.org-1

The public key (cache-key.pub) should be distributed to the clients.
They should have a nix.conf should contain something like:

  signed-binary-caches = *
  binary-cache-public-key-cache.example.org-1 = /path/to/cache-key.pub

If all works well, then if Nix fetches something from the signed
binary cache, you will see a message like:

  *** Downloading ‘http://cache.example.org/nar/7dppcj5sc1nda7l54rjc0g5l1hamj09j-subversion-1.7.11’ (signed by ‘cache.example.org-1’) to ‘/nix/store/7dppcj5sc1nda7l54rjc0g5l1hamj09j-subversion-1.7.11’...

On the other hand, if the signature is wrong, you get a message like

  NAR info file `http://cache.example.org/7dppcj5sc1nda7l54rjc0g5l1hamj09j.narinfo' has an invalid signature; ignoring

Signatures are implemented as a single line appended to the NAR info
file, which looks like this:

  Signature: 1;cache.example.org-1;HQ9Xzyanq9iV...muQ==

Thus the signature has 3 fields: a version (currently "1"), the ID of
key, and the base64-encoded signature of the SHA-256 hash of the
contents of the NAR info file up to but not including the Signature
line.

Issue #75.
Diffstat (limited to 'corepkgs')
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