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Eelco Dolstra 0fdf4da0e9 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.
2014-01-08 15:42:53 +01:00
corepkgs Lower xz compression level 2013-09-02 13:32:51 +02:00
doc Add a toJSON primop 2013-11-19 00:04:11 +01:00
misc Rename nix-worker to nix-daemon 2012-10-03 17:59:23 -04:00
perl Support cryptographically signed binary caches 2014-01-08 15:42:53 +01:00
scripts Support cryptographically signed binary caches 2014-01-08 15:42:53 +01:00
src Merge branch 'dynamic-attrs-no-sugar' of github.com:shlevy/nix 2014-01-06 15:46:18 +01:00
tests Support cryptographically signed binary caches 2014-01-08 15:42:53 +01:00
.gitignore Remove nix-setuid-helper 2013-11-14 11:57:37 +01:00
AUTHORS * Put something in here. 2004-11-07 20:30:02 +00:00
COPYING * Change this to LGPL to keep the government happy. 2006-04-25 16:41:06 +00:00
INSTALL * Autoconf / Automake configuration and building. 2003-04-04 16:14:56 +00:00
Makefile.am Garbage collector: Don't follow symlinks arbitrarily 2013-07-12 14:03:36 +02:00
README * Install documentation in $(docdir) (i.e. share/doc/nix). 2008-11-19 13:19:09 +00:00
bootstrap.sh bootstrap: Simplify & make more robust. 2011-09-06 12:11:05 +00:00
build.nix Add an experimental nix-make file 2012-05-21 09:43:01 -04:00
configure.ac Remove nix-setuid-helper 2013-11-14 11:57:37 +01:00
dev-shell Hack to clean up tests/test-tmp 2013-08-21 12:53:46 +02:00
nix.spec.in Add gzip support for channel unpacking 2013-07-12 11:29:37 +02:00
release.nix Disable FreeBSD tests for now 2014-01-06 11:35:42 +01:00
substitute.mk Support cryptographically signed binary caches 2014-01-08 15:42:53 +01:00
version Bump version number 2013-11-19 14:45:19 +01:00

README

Nix is a purely functional package manager.  For installation and
usage instructions, please read the manual, which can be found in
`docs/manual/manual.html', and additionally at the Nix website at
<http://nixos.org/>.


Acknowledgments

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for
use in the OpenSSL Toolkit (http://www.OpenSSL.org/).