ftp(1) prints TLS and short read errors to stdout rather than stderr
Pontus Stenetorp <[email protected]> Tue, 28 Jul 2026 23:54:52 +0900
| Newsgroups | gmane.os.openbsd.tech |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <amjCvBQn9PZMlje_@localhost> |
ftp(1) prints some of its errors to stdout, which may lead to confusion when used in scripts like syspatch(8).
$ ftp -Mo /dev/null https://expired.badssl.com; echo $?
Trying 104.154.89.105...
TLS handshake failure: certificate verification failed: certificate has expired
1
$ ftp -Mo /dev/null https://expired.badssl.com > /dev/null; echo $?
1
$ openssl req -keyout /tmp/localhost.key -newkey rsa -nodes -out \
/tmp/localhost.crt -subj '/CN=localhost' -x509
$ printf 'HTTP/1.1 200 OK\nContent-Length:4711\n\n17' | nc -clN -C \
/tmp/localhost.crt -K /tmp/localhost.key localhost 4443
$ ftp -Mo /dev/null -S dont https://localhost:4443; echo $?
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Requesting https://localhost:4443
Read short file.
1
$ ftp -Mo /dev/null -S dont https://localhost:4443 > /dev/null; echo $?
1
Discovered by trying to run syspatch(8) on a machine with a Bios clock well into 2027, which caused syspatch to run in an interactive shell but fetch nothing and print nothing due to a perceived expired certificate.
From what I can tell, the relevant code goes back to the original SSL support implementation back in 2006:
https://cvsweb.openbsd.org/diff/src/usr.bin/ftp/fetch.c?rev=1.61&prev=1.60
The diff mirrors how errors are printed in the surrounding code. Feedback is welcome though as I am still rather new to OpenBSD hacking.
diff /usr/src
path + /usr/src
commit - 95a78e283c1363d0a2f44ed4baea4243f1abf975
blob - 453f6fd269851e8f4023e726128821ff2b4a15c3
file + usr.bin/ftp/fetch.c
--- usr.bin/ftp/fetch.c
+++ usr.bin/ftp/fetch.c
@@ -644,23 +644,22 @@ noslash:
errx(1, "Can't allocate memory for https host.");
}
if ((tls = tls_client()) == NULL) {
- fprintf(ttyout, "failed to create SSL client\n");
+ warnx("failed to create SSL client");
goto cleanup_url_get;
}
if (tls_configure(tls, tls_config) != 0) {
- fprintf(ttyout, "TLS configuration failure: %s\n",
- tls_error(tls));
+ warnx("TLS configuration failure: %s", tls_error(tls));
goto cleanup_url_get;
}
if (tls_connect_socket(tls, fd, sslhost) != 0) {
- fprintf(ttyout, "TLS connect failure: %s\n", tls_error(tls));
+ warnx("TLS connect failure: %s", tls_error(tls));
goto cleanup_url_get;
}
do {
ret = tls_handshake(tls);
} while (ret == TLS_WANT_POLLIN || ret == TLS_WANT_POLLOUT);
if (ret != 0) {
- fprintf(ttyout, "TLS handshake failure: %s\n", tls_error(tls));
+ warnx("TLS handshake failure: %s", tls_error(tls));
goto cleanup_url_get;
}
fin = funopen(tls, stdio_tls_read_wrapper,
@@ -1101,7 +1100,7 @@ noslash:
#endif /* !SMALL */
filesize != -1 && len == 0 && bytes != filesize) {
if (verbose)
- fputs("Read short file.\n", ttyout);
+ warnx("Read short file.");
goto cleanup_url_get;
}