util: Forbid ambiguous multiple assignments in config file

ryanofsky commented at 10:11 pm on November 15, 2019: contributor

This is based on #16545 + #17580. The non-base commits are:

928aa85db517 util: Forbid ambiguous multiple assignments in config file
ec1698a0a370 test: Extend util_ArgsMerge test to check for “Multiple values specified” errors

Enable error “Multiple values specified for -setting in same section of config file.”, for ALLOW_ANY settings that don’t specify ALLOW_LIST.

Instead of silently ignoring settings, this change makes it an error to provide an ambiguous config file that provides assigns multiple values to a single-value setting. Change includes release notes.

Part of the motivation for this change is to improve usability and prevent settings that look valid from being silently ignored. Another motivation is to be able to remove confusing “reverse precedence” logic in #17581

fanquake added the label Utils/log/libs on Nov 15, 2019

fanquake added the label Refactoring on Nov 15, 2019

DrahtBot commented at 0:31 am on November 16, 2019: contributor

The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.

Code Coverage & Benchmarks

For details see: https://corecheck.dev/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls/17493.

Reviews

See the guideline for information on the review process.

Type	Reviewers
Concept NACK	ajtowns
Concept ACK	JeremyRubin

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Conflicts

Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:

#31483 (kernel: Move kernel-related cache constants to kernel cache by TheCharlatan)
#31260 (scripted-diff: Type-safe settings retrieval by ryanofsky)
#31223 (net, init: derive default onion port if a user specified a -port by mzumsande)
#29365 (Extend signetchallenge to set target block spacing by starius)
#28792 (Embed default ASMap as binary dump header file by fjahr)
#26966 (index: initial sync speedup, parallelize process by furszy)
#16545 (refactor: Implement missing error checking for ArgsManager flags by ryanofsky)

If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.

in src/util/system.cpp:969 in e81c6ea28d outdated

808+        bool negated = !InterpretKey(section, key, &option.second);
809+        Optional<unsigned int> flags = GetArgFlags('-' + key);
810         if (flags) {
811-            if (!CheckValid(key, value, flags, error)) {
812+            if (!(*flags & ALLOW_LIST) && m_settings.ro_config[section].count(key)) {
813+                error = strprintf("Multiple values specified for -%s in same section of config file.", key);

JeremyRubin commented at 9:18 pm on November 18, 2019:

Perhaps only err if the value differs?

JeremyRubin commented at 9:23 pm on November 18, 2019: contributor

Concept ACK.

Curious if you think this has a high likelihood of breaking a lot of configs in the wild – but I suppose it’s worth it, as anything which could be intentionally repeated gets the new flag.

One interesting point: if something is not allow list, but receives a new param that is identical to the last set one, we could allow it? Something like this could be useful for certain bool settings if config files are being merged.

Noting for reference tracking that #12763 will require an update after this is merged.

ryanofsky force-pushed on Nov 21, 2019

ryanofsky force-pushed on Nov 24, 2019

ryanofsky referenced this in commit 8c93069558 on Nov 24, 2019

ryanofsky renamed this:
~~util: Forbid ambiguous repeated assignments in config file~~
util: Forbid ambiguous multiple assignments in config file
on Nov 24, 2019

Khailand69 approved

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on Dec 19, 2019

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ajtowns commented at 5:16 am on January 9, 2020: contributor

Weak concept NACK on this, precedence in config files might be confusing but it’s not ambiguous and specifying setting=1 \n setting=2 is something you might plausibly see in the wild, so this change has the potential to cause systems to not restart correctly… Maybe having a warning rather than an error for a release would be better? Still, better to make the change once for everything than gradually as things get switched away from ALLOW_ANY to something more specific.

ryanofsky commented at 8:18 pm on January 9, 2020: contributor

so this change has the potential to cause systems to not restart correctly…

This description sounds a little misleading to me. It is true that if someone had an ambiguous config file, and they updated to a new bitcoin version and then restarted without testing, they would see a “Multiple values specified for -foo in same section of config file” init error. But there wouldn’t be a question of correctness, or risk that the new version would start up using different settings than the old version.

Personally, I don’t think a debug log warning would be as good as an error here, given experience with issues like #15629 where warnings have seemed pretty easy to miss. I understand your concern about the case where someone upgrades their version of bitcoin and sees an error about an insignificant ambiguity in their config file. But I wouldn’t want to forget about cases where someone could upgrade bitcoin be prompted to fix config errors that actually affected their privacy or security.

I wonder what you think about Jeremy’s suggestion to prevent errors in more spurious cases where a setting is repeated but the value doesn’t change: #17493#pullrequestreview-318636254. It’d be pretty easy to tweak the PR to avoid triggering errors in these cases.

ajtowns commented at 5:52 am on January 23, 2020: contributor

This description sounds a little misleading to me.

Sure; I meant “restart correctly” as in “keep working the way things are supposed to rather than gratuitously break and cause the sysadmin headaches” :) But yeah, I agree a warning everyone will miss isn’t that helpful, and there aren’t any better approaches coming to mind; really that’s what release notes and being careful about upgrades are for.

I’d probably wait to see someone using it in real life before adding special cases for duplicate settings with the same param/value.

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fanquake marked this as a draft on Feb 8, 2023

fanquake commented at 11:25 am on February 8, 2023: member

Moved this to draft for now, given it’s based on multiple other PRs, some of which are also drafts.

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common: Grammar / formatting tweaks

Implement cleanup suggestions from l0rinc:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/16545#discussion_r1773221823
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/16545#discussion_r1773291395
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/16545#discussion_r1775897382

20a9986751

doc: Add detailed ArgsManager type flag documention

This commit just adds documentation for the type flags. The flags are actually
implemented in the following two commits.

30385f2976

common: Implement ArgsManager flags to parse and validate settings on startup

This commit implements support for new ALLOW_BOOL, ALLOW_INT, ALLOW_STRING, and
ALLOW_LIST flags by validating settings with these flags earlier on startup and
providing detailed error messages to users.

The new flags implement stricter error checking than ALLOW_ANY. For example, a
double negated option like -nosetting=0 is treated like an error instead of
true, and an unrecognized bool value like -setting=true is treated like an
error instead of false. And if a non-list setting is assigned multiple times in
the same section of a configuration file, the later assignments trigger errors
instead of being silently ignored.

The new flags also provide type information that allows ArgsManager
GetSettings() and GetSettingsList() methods to return typed integer and boolean
values instead of unparsed strings.

The changes in this commit have no effect on current application behavior
because the new flags are only used in unit tests. The existing ALLOW_ANY
checks in the argsman_tests/CheckValueTest confirm that no behavior is changing
for current settings, which use ALLOW_ANY.

a7a35ed080

common: Update ArgManager GetArg helper methods to work better with ALLOW flags

Update GetArg, GetArgs, GetBoolArg, and GetIntArg helper methods to work
conveniently with ALLOW_BOOL, ALLOW_INT, and ALLOW_STRING flags.

The GetArg methods are convenience wrappers around the GetSetting method. The
GetSetting method returns the originally parsed settings values in their
declared bool/int/string types, while the GetArg wrappers provide extra
type-coercion and default-value fallback features as additional conveniences
for callers.

This commit makes two changes to GetArg, GetArgs, GetBoolArg, and GetIntArg
helper methods when BOOL/INT/STRING flags are used:

1. GetArg methods will now raise errors if they are called with inconsistent
   flags. For example, GetArgs will raise a logic_error if it is called on a
   non-LIST setting, GetIntArg will raise a logic_error if it is called
   on a non-INT setting.

2. GetArg methods will now avoid various type coersion footguns when they are
   called on new BOOL/INT/STRING settings. Existing ALLOW_ANY settings are
   unaffected. For example, negated settings will return "" empty strings
   instead of "0" strings (in the past the "0" strings caused strangeness like
   "-nowallet" options creating wallet files named "0"). The new behaviors are
   fully specified and checked by the `CheckValueTest` unit test.

The ergonomics of the GetArg helper methods are subjective and the behaviors
they implement can be nitpicked and debated endlessly. But behavior of these
helper methods does not dictate application behavior, and they can be bypassed
by calling GetSetting and GetSettingList methods instead. If it's necessary,
behavior of these helper methods can also be changed again in the future.

The changes have no effect on current application behavior because the new
flags are only used in unit tests. The `setting_args` unit test and ALLOW_ANY
checks in the `CheckValueTest` unit test are unchanged and confirm that
`GetArg` methods behave the same as before for ALLOW_ANY flags (returning the
same values and throwing the same exceptions).

225ab2bf73

test: Add tests to demonstrate usage of ArgsManager flags

Co-authored-by: Hodlinator <172445034+hodlinator@users.noreply.github.com>

350c71510e

test: Add test for settings.json parsing with type flags

The type flags aren't currently used to validate or convert settings in the
settings.json file, but they should be in the future. Add test to check current
behavior that can be extended when flags are applied.

Co-authored-by: Hodlinator <172445034+hodlinator@users.noreply.github.com>

b5ef854974

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/pull/16545/head' afaf2265a1

common: Add support for combining ArgsManager flags

Let ALLOW_STRING and ALLOW_INT flags be combined with ALLOW_BOOL so string and
int options can be specified without explicit values. This is useful for
imperative settings that trigger new behavior when specified and can accept
optional string or integer values, but do not require them. (For examples, see
the example_options unit test modified in this commit.)

da3bdd5f00

scripted-diff: Add ALLOW_LIST flag to arguments retrieved with GetArgs

This change has no effect on behavior, and is basically just a documentation
change at this point. The ALLOW_LIST flag is currently ignored unless
ALLOW_BOOL, ALLOW_INT, or ALLOW_STRING flags are also present, and these flags
are not used yet.

-BEGIN VERIFY SCRIPT-
for f in `git grep -n 'GetArgs(' | grep -v _tests | sed -n 's/.*GetArgs("\([^"]\+\)".*/\1/p' | sort -u`; do
   git grep -l -- "$f" | xargs sed -i "/AddArg(\"$f[=\"]/ s/ArgsManager::ALLOW_ANY/& | ArgsManager::ALLOW_LIST/g"
done
-END VERIFY SCRIPT-

603423e139

refactor: Fix more ALLOW_LIST arguments

- Remove ALLOW_LIST flag from bitcoin-wallet -wallet and -debug arguments. They
  are list arguments for bitcoind, but single arguments for bitcoin-wallet.

- Add ALLOW_LIST flag to -includeconf arg (missed by scripted diff since it's
  not accessed through GetArgs)

- Add ALLOW_LIST flag to -debug, -loglevel, -whitebind, and -whitelist args
  (missed by scripted diff due to line breaks in AddArgs calls)

- Add ALLOW_LIST flag to -zmq args (missed by scripted diff due to programmatic
  GetArgs calls)

This change has no effect on behavior, and is basically just a documentation
change at this point. The ALLOW_LIST flag is currently ignored unless
ALLOW_BOOL, ALLOW_INT, or ALLOW_STRING flags are also present, and these flags
are not used yet.

8f6aa8575f

Always reject empty -blockfilterindex="" arguments

Previous behavior was inconsistent: if -blockfilterindex or
-blockfilterindex="" arguments were specified they would normally enable all
block filter indexes, but could also trigger "Unknown -blockfilterindex value"
errors if followed by later -blockfilterindex arguments.

It was confusing that the same -blockfilterindex options could sometime trigger
errors and sometimes not depending on option position. It was also confusing
that an empty -blockfilterindex="" setting could enable all indexes even though
indexes are disabled by default.

New behavior is more straightforward:

- -blockfilterindex and -blockfilterindex=1 always enable indexes
- -noblockfilterindex and -blockfilterindex=0 always disable indexes
- -blockfilterindex="" is always an unknown value error

The meaning of these options no longer changes based on option position.

7a756355c1

refactor: Always enforce ALLOW_LIST in CheckArgFlags

Prevent GetArg() from being called on ALLOW_LIST arguments, and GetArgs() from
being called on non-list arguments.

This checking was previously skipped unless typed INT/BOOL/STRING flags were
present, but now it's always done.

This change has no effect on external behavior. It is just supposed to enforce
internal consistency and prevent bugs caused by using the wrong GetArg method
to retrieve settings.

d2edef6b1a

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/pull/17580/head' 58c06888dc

util: Forbid ambiguous multiple assignments in config file

Enable error "Multiple values specified for -setting in same section of config
file.", for ALLOW_ANY settings that don't specify ALLOW_LIST.

Instead of silently ignoring settings, this change makes it an error to provide
an ambiguous config file that provides assigns multiple values to a
single-value setting. Change include release notes.

928aa85db5

test: Extend util_ArgsMerge test to check for "Multiple values specified" errors

Also skip calling TestArgString in these cases since exact behavior retrieving
values is irrelevant when parsing values fails.

Also s/TestArgString/GetArg/ to be more efficient and direct, now that it's no
longer necessary to call with separation of ALLOW_LIST and non ALLOW_LIST
cases.

ec1698a0a3

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DrahtBot commented at 1:18 am on December 14, 2024: contributor

🐙 This pull request conflicts with the target branch and needs rebase.

util: Forbid ambiguous multiple assignments in config file #17493

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