Re: [pve-devel] [PATCH manager] ui: storage: esxi: check 'skip certificate verification' by default

[Thomas Lamprecht <t.lamprecht@proxmox.com>]

On 22/03/2024 08:29, Dominik Csapak wrote:
> On 3/21/24 18:07, Thomas Lamprecht wrote:
>> On 20/03/2024 16:39, Dominik Csapak wrote:
>>> needing one less step when adding the storage, assuming most esxi
>>> certificates are self-signed.
>>
>> Well this makes it insecure by default though? Which is not something
>> I'd just not mention in such a commit message...
> 
> imho it is very obvious what it does from the commit subject?
> 
> 'skipping the certificate verification'
> 
> ?
> but ok, i can add a sentence more in the description..

as always, the reasoning and why's count a bit more in such
cases – making the default insecure is something where a giving
a reason for why this is OK is rather a must...

>> As that was the original reason I ticked it in the first place
>> when pondering between security and convenience...
>>
> 
> the thought here was that users that make the effort of giving
> their esxi instances valid certificates, can simply uncheck the checkbox?

So can the others?! And that would be pretty obvious if the error
message gets passed through like I requested already off list over
a week ago..

As again... this is making the connection completely insecure, and
users with valid certs won't be notified of that fact "so simply check"
it is really not something a user can be aware of if it "works" without
enabling basic security..
 > and i guess many of the users won't bother doing that for the
> esxi instances? (e.g. vcenter does not make that distinction, all
> it does is ask for hostname/ip + password, and cert management seems
> to be non-trivial)

again, not an argument for why we should make it less secure.

>> If we do this I'd rather rename it to "Check Certificate" and have
>> that unticked.
> 
> ok makes sense, i'd name it 'verify certificate' though to be in line
> with our realm/metric server wording
> 
> also should this be only in the frontend, or do we want to reverse
> the api/config option as well?

No, I'd keep it off there, so having the user pass the --skip- option
makes it more clear.

But tbh. I probably won't apply this in any way, as mentioned there
are other ways to actually improve on this, the error message would
be a relatively easy first one.