letsencrypt / letsencrypt/boulder

Log before any issuance action; explicitly fail when logging fails

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#4,946 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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kind/enhancement kind/metrics
Dominant language
Go
Stars
5.8k
Forks
649
Avg merge
3d 23h
Merged PRs (30d)
24

Description

Complete logs are critical to a CA's auditability. Currently, Boulder components will (implicitly) block while waiting for syslog to consume messages from the logging socket.

It would be great for Boulder to explicity fail if it can't successfully log, instead of relying on this runtime behavior. It should always also log issuance actions before, not after, they're taken.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Begin by identifying every Boulder component that performs a certificate issuance action and tracing its current logging path. The work is done when each action logs before it occurs and an inability to log causes an explicit failure rather than relying on syslog socket behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
backend, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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