Upgrading from Cyrus SASLv1 to Cyrus SASLv2
This document covers issues with upgrading from SASLv1 to SASLv2.
To upgrade:
- Install Cyrus SASL v2 as normal according to the installation guide. This will overwrite
some manpages, but will not affect your current applications. Do NOT
attempt to make it use the same directories, otherwise old Cyrus SASLv1
applications will no longer function.
- Install your new Cyrus SASL v2 applications. Applications that
use Cyrus SASLv1 will not use the Cyrus SASL v2
infrastructure (and vice-versa).
- If you used /etc/sasldb for authentication, you'll need
to take the following steps to convert to using /etc/sasldb2
with Cyrus SASL v2:
- run utils/dbconverter-2 after installation.
- change the pwcheck_method in any config files to
auxprop
- (optional) add auxprop_plugin to the config files,
set to sasldb
- If you used passwd, shadow, pam,
kerberos_v4 or sia as your pwcheck_method
in libsasl v1, you'll need to convert to using
saslauthd. Arrange to start saslauthd -a
method on boot. Change pwcheck_method in any
configuration files to saslauthd.
- If you used pwcheck with libsasl v1, you can either
continue to use pwcheck with libsasl v1 or you can switch to
saslauthd, which offers more flexibility and a potentially
much more efficient implementation.
- If you are continuing to use some libsasl v1 applications, read
onwards to understand the ramifications.
- If you want to learn how to port applications from libsasl v1 to
libsasl v2, you should read this document.
Cyrus SASLv2 is completely incompatible with applications that use
Cyrus SASLv1. This means that applications are unable to
simultaneously link both versions of the library, and developers are
encouraged to instead develop or upgrade their applications to link
against the new libsasl.
Likewise, the format for the sasldb database has been completely
revamped. See here for a discussion of the relevant
upgrade issues related to sasldb. All new passwords stored in the
sasldb database will be in plaintext, meaning that a compromised
sasldb will compromise all services with the same passwords. (This
situation isn't significantly worse, cryptographicly speaking, than
the old method and allows the database to be easy to transition to
another format, when the need arises.) Mechanisms requiring a more
secure password database backend (e.g. SRP) should implement their own
or use alternate property names within sasldb.
The two library versions and the associated utilities should be able
to coexist on the same system. The man pages will be unable to
coexist (but luckily the new manpages are much better!). The libsasl
v2-specific utilities have had a "2" appended to their name for this
purpose (e.g. saslpasswd2, sasldblistusers2). The
new-style sasldb now defaults to the name /etc/sasldb2, but
this is configurable.
While there does not seem to be any conflict with the keys stored in
the database, it is not recommended for both versions of the library
to use the same database file. Included in the utils directory is a
program called dbconverter-2 which will allow you to convert
from the old-format database to the new format. Note that if you continue to
run older applications that rely on Cyrus SASLv1, the databases for SASLv1
and SASLv2 will not automatically be kept in sync.
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