Re: [kitten] New Version Notification for draft-kaduk-kitten-gss-loop-02.txt (fwd)

[Greg Hudson <[e-mail]>]

On 01/17/2014 08:01 PM, Martin Rex wrote:
>>> /* It is safe to call gss_release_buffer twice on the same buffer. */

> I hadn't notice this strange comment about gss_release_buffer() before,
> and I'm voilently opposed, please remove that misleading comment.

The comment in the draft is trying to say that it's okay to call
gss_release_buffer twice with the same reference to a gss_buffer_desc
structure, trusting that the first call will put the structure into a
state where the second call is a no-op.  Unfortunately, RFC 2744 does
not appear to guarantee this; 5.26 only requires that the length is set
to 0 after the storage is freed (implementations are merely "encouraged"
to zero the pointer field), and does not guarantee that a second call
won't double-free the storage.

If it is okay for the sample code to rely on this behavior, in spite of
RFC 2744 not specifying that it is okay, then perhaps the comment should
be clarified or removed to avoid confusing people like it did Martin.