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From:
Nick Owens <mischief@offblast.org>
Subject:
Re: relayd reload race crash
To:
Rafael Sadowski <rafael@sizeofvoid.org>
Cc:
tech@openbsd.org
Date:
Sun, 1 Mar 2026 05:50:55 -0800

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hello rafael,

On Sun, Mar 01, 2026 at 09:47:54AM +0100, Rafael Sadowski wrote:
> Hi Nick Owens,
> 
> do you have a minimal test setup to to reproduce that? Comments below.

my apologies. i did not inclue what i originally wrote to bugs@ in one
of my replies..

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-bugs&m=177018029002894&w=2

doas watch -s 0.1 relayctl -s /tmp/relayd.sock reload
	
watch -s 0 curl -kso /dev/null https://127.0.0.1:444

fugu$ cat x.conf
socket "/tmp/relayd.sock"
table <www> { 127.0.0.1 }
http protocol "proxy" {
	tls keypair "test"
	return error
}

relay "https" {
	listen on 0.0.0.0 port 444 tls
	protocol "proxy"
	forward to <www> port 80
}

fugu$ doas ./obj/relayd -d -f x.conf
startup
adding 1 hosts from table www:80 (no check)
adding 1 hosts from table www:80 (no check)
adding 1 hosts from table www:80 (no check)
<snip>
adding 1 hosts from table www:80 (no check)
adding 1 hosts from table www:80 (no check)
adding 1 hosts from table www:80 (no check)
ca: ca_dispatch_relay: invalid relay hash 'SHA256:764076891ced15921fb2ec023df3232c194dccac8c6b9fde2565ca01ed13874d'
hce exiting, pid 71488
pfe exiting, pid 40741
ca exiting, pid 48707
relay: pipe closed
lost child: pid 39177 exited abnormally
ca exiting, pid 20355
lost child: pid 71618 exited abnormally
relay exiting, pid 83235
relay exiting, pid 71571
parent terminating, pid 32006

> 
> On Sat Feb 28, 2026 at 10:59:22PM -0800, Nick Owens wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 10, 2026 at 04:34:08PM -0800, Nick Owens wrote:
> > > On Tue, Feb 03, 2026 at 10:15:20PM -0800, Nick Owens wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Feb 04, 2026 at 03:51:11PM +1000, Paul W. Rankin wrote:
> > > > > > On 04/02/2026 1:58 PM AEST mischief () offblast ! org wrote:
> > > > > > 	this was brought up by rnkn on IRC, 
> > > > > 
> > > > > I'm just looping myself in here. Thanks.
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > one approach is to return negative cko_tlen back to rsae_send_imsg. this
> > > > might result in some broken tls connections, but its better than taking
> > > > down all of relayd.
> > > > 
> > > > a better fix would probably be to temporarily stop processing rsa ops
> > > > altogether while reload is happening, but i'm not sure of a good
> > > > approach for that.
> > > > 
> > > > Index: ca.c
> > > > ===================================================================
> > > > RCS file: /cvs/src/usr.sbin/relayd/ca.c,v
> > > > diff -u -p -r1.45 ca.c
> > > > --- ca.c        21 Nov 2024 13:21:34 -0000      1.45
> > > > +++ ca.c        4 Feb 2026 06:03:33 -0000
> > > > @@ -234,9 +234,15 @@ ca_dispatch_relay(int fd, struct privsep
> > > >                         fatalx("%s: invalid relay proc", __func__);
> > > >                 if (IMSG_DATA_SIZE(imsg) != (sizeof(cko) + cko.cko_flen))
> > > >                         fatalx("%s: invalid key operation", __func__);
> > > > -               if ((pkey = pkey_find(env, cko.cko_hash)) == NULL)
> > > > -                       fatalx("%s: invalid relay hash '%s'",
> 
> Yes I think this is to aggressive during a reload process.
> 
> > > > +               if ((pkey = pkey_find(env, cko.cko_hash)) == NULL) {
> > > > +                       log_warnx("%s: invalid relay hash '%s'",
> > > >                             __func__, cko.cko_hash);
> > > > +                       cko.cko_tlen = -1;
> > > > +                       if (proc_compose_imsg(env->sc_ps, PROC_RELAY, cko.cko_proc,
> > > > +                           imsg->hdr.type, -1, -1, &cko, sizeof(cko)) == -1)
> > > > +                               log_warn("%s: proc_composev_imsg", __func__);
> > > > +                       break;
> > > > +               }
> > > >                 if ((rsa = EVP_PKEY_get1_RSA(pkey)) == NULL)
> > > >                         fatalx("%s: invalid relay key", __func__);
> 
> If we go this way, we need to handle this too.
> 
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > ping. here is an alternate approach to stop processing imsgs from PROC_RELAY by removing the events during reload, but when testing i still had client connections get empty replies, closed early, or the rsa op timed out. however, relayd also does not crash.
> 
> The fix replaces a crash with a broken connection? 
> 
> > 
> > ping again. i hope this will be fixed for the next release.
> > 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > diff --git a/usr.sbin/relayd/ca.c b/usr.sbin/relayd/ca.c
> > > index e54259c5971..89f7f48685e 100644
> > > --- a/usr.sbin/relayd/ca.c
> > > +++ b/usr.sbin/relayd/ca.c
> > > @@ -204,9 +204,11 @@ ca_dispatch_parent(int fd, struct privsep_proc *p, struct imsg *imsg)
> > >  		break;
> > >  	case IMSG_CTL_START:
> > >  		ca_launch();
> > > +		proc_unblock(p->p_ps, PROC_RELAY);
> > >  		break;
> > >  	case IMSG_CTL_RESET:
> > >  		config_getreset(env, imsg);
> > > +		proc_block(p->p_ps, PROC_RELAY);
> > >  		break;
> > >  	default:
> > >  		return -1;
> > > diff --git a/usr.sbin/relayd/proc.c b/usr.sbin/relayd/proc.c
> > > index 3eb00aa0381..56a49120cb4 100644
> > > --- a/usr.sbin/relayd/proc.c
> > > +++ b/usr.sbin/relayd/proc.c
> > > @@ -682,6 +682,38 @@ proc_dispatch_null(int fd, struct privsep_proc *p, struct imsg *imsg)
> > >  	return (-1);
> > >  }
> > >  
> > > +void
> > > +proc_block(struct privsep *ps, enum privsep_procid id)
> > > +{
> > > +	struct imsgev *iev;
> > > +	int n, m;
> > > +
> > > +	n = -1;
> > > +
> > > +	proc_range(ps, id, &n, &m);
> > > +
> > > +	for(; n < m; n++){
> > > +		iev = &ps->ps_ievs[id][n];
> > > +		event_del(&iev->ev);
> > > +	}
> > > +}
> > > +
> > > +void
> > > +proc_unblock(struct privsep *ps, enum privsep_procid id)
> > > +{
> > > +	struct imsgev *iev;
> > > +	int n, m;
> > > +
> > > +	n = -1;
> > > +
> > > +	proc_range(ps, id, &n, &m);
> > > +
> > > +	for(; n < m; n++){
> > > +		iev = &ps->ps_ievs[id][n];
> > > +		event_add(&iev->ev, NULL);
> > > +	}
> > > +}
> > > +
> > >  /*
> > >   * imsg helper functions
> > >   */
> > > diff --git a/usr.sbin/relayd/relayd.h b/usr.sbin/relayd/relayd.h
> > > index 3b5c3987f93..697c3bd8b48 100644
> > > --- a/usr.sbin/relayd/relayd.h
> > > +++ b/usr.sbin/relayd/relayd.h
> > > @@ -1451,6 +1451,8 @@ int	 imsg_compose_event(struct imsgev *, uint16_t, uint32_t,
> > >  	    pid_t, int, void *, uint16_t);
> > >  int	 imsg_composev_event(struct imsgev *, uint16_t, uint32_t,
> > >  	    pid_t, int, const struct iovec *, int);
> > > +void	 proc_block(struct privsep *, enum privsep_procid);
> > > +void	 proc_unblock(struct privsep *, enum privsep_procid);
> > >  
> > >  /* config.c */
> > >  int	 config_init(struct relayd *);
> > 
> 
> Is a workaround and not a fix for the root of the problem. Are you
> agree?

yes, broken client connections aren't ideal, but i feel it's better than
relayd giving up the ghost entirely if for example in the extremely
common case, one is using crontab like i do:

@weekly acme-client example.com && rcctl reload relayd

today if you do this you are simply playing russian roulette with your
webserver.

thanks,
nick