ucspi-tls(2)

NAME
UCSPI-TLS - advanced and secure communication between server and prog

DESCRIPTON
A UCSPI-TLS enhanced server makes optional SSL services available to the client by providing three file descriptors: a control socket, a reading pipe, and a writing pipe. The file descriptor number of the control socket will be in the environment variable $SSLCTLFD. The file descriptor number of the reading pipe will be in the environment variable $SSLREADFD, and the file descriptor number of the writing pipe will be in the environment variable $SSLWRITEFD. It's possible for all three of these file descriptors to be the same.

USAGE
UCSPI-TLS provides standard IN and OUT (file descriptors 0 and 1) to connected directly to the socket, for unencrypted communication. The control socket must accept at least these two commands:

y   Start TLS.

Y   Start TLS, and send optional SSL connection information back over the control socket.

The SSL connection information will be in the in the form of an environment string, with zero or more environment variables, terminated by two ASCII NULL's. Each environment variable is stored as "VAR=val ", and an additional trailing is used to indicate the end of all environment variables. If there are no variables to set, " " should be used. When TLS is started, the UCSPI-TLS enabled server will take control of the socket, and the application is expected to switch to the file descriptors in $SSLREADFD and $SSLWRITEFD for all future communications. Using the regular socket after activating TLS will probably just confuse the client.

REFERENCE
Where possible, the environment variables set should be the same ones as Apache's mod_ssl: http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.4/mod/mod_ssl.html

CREDITS
Scott Gifford, Charlie Brady