340909 - certutil batch mode is not in usage and should be command rather than option

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(NSS :: Tools, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Julien Pierre]

When this batch mode was added in bug 214397 , it was not put in the usage.
I think it's time we put it in there.
But it should be a command rather than an option.
At the present time, you must specify any command of certutil (such as -L) and -B batch-file.

I propose to change the syntax to a command, with the syntax of certutil -B -i batch-file . This should be OK since -B was not documented.

My main problem was that I ran certutil -L -B batch-file . But the command -L caused certutil to open the NSS DB in read-only mode. And then my other certutil commands (such as -A) which required read-write failed ! But of course no sensible error was reported; I had to debug this all the way into softoken to find out why. I think it's safe to say that in batch mode we never want to open read-only.

Comment 1

[Julien Pierre]

Attachment: change -B to a command, use -i for the batch file name, and fix usage

Comment 2

[Nelson Bolyard (seldom reads bugmail)]

Comment on attachment 224947 [details] [diff] [review]
change -B to a command, use -i for the batch file name, and fix usage

Do any test scripts use the -B feature?  (e.g. all.sh ?)
if so, they need to be modified, and the checkins for those modifications should accomplany this checkin.

I might also suggest that -i be optional, and stdin should be used in its absence.  But that can be a further enhancement.

Comment 3

[Julien Pierre]

No test scripts currently use -B to my knowledge. I was trying to use the batch feature to reproduce a bug in our cert code that is not easy to reproduce. Unfortunately so far I haven't succeeded; I may just have to write a separate test program.

I checked this in to the tip :

Checking in certutil.c;
/cvsroot/mozilla/security/nss/cmd/certutil/certutil.c,v  <--  certutil.c
new revision: 1.104; previous revision: 1.103
done

As well as the branch :

Checking in certutil.c;
/cvsroot/mozilla/security/nss/cmd/certutil/certutil.c,v  <--  certutil.c
new revision: 1.97.2.6; previous revision: 1.97.2.5
done