path: root/docs/KNOWN_BUGS

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                                  Known Bugs

These are problems and bugs known to exist at the time of this release. Feel
free to join in and help us correct one or more of these! Also be sure to
check the changelog of the current development status, as one or more of these
problems may have been fixed or changed somewhat since this was written!

 1. HTTP
 1.1 CURLFORM_CONTENTLEN in an array
 1.2 Disabling HTTP Pipelining
 1.3 STARTTRANSFER time is wrong for HTTP POSTs
 1.4 multipart formposts file name encoding
 1.5 Expect-100 meets 417
 1.6 Unnecessary close when 401 received waiting for 100
 1.7 CONNECT response larger than 16KB
 1.8 DNS timing is wrong for HTTP redirects
 1.9 HTTP/2 frames while in the connection pool kill reuse
 1.10 Strips trailing dot from host name
 1.11 CURLOPT_SEEKFUNCTION not called with CURLFORM_STREAM

 2. TLS
 2.1 Hangs with PolarSSL
 2.2 CURLINFO_SSL_VERIFYRESULT has limited support
 2.3 DER in keychain
 2.4 GnuTLS backend skips really long certificate fields

 3. Email protocols
 3.1 IMAP SEARCH ALL truncated response
 3.2 No disconnect command
 3.3 SMTP to multiple recipients
 3.4 POP3 expects "CRLF.CRLF" eob for some single-line responses

 4. Command line
 4.1 -J with %-encoded file nameas
 4.2 -J with -C - fails
 4.3 --retry and transfer timeouts

 5. Build and portability issues
 5.1 Windows Borland compiler
 5.2 curl-config --libs contains private details
 5.3 libidn and old iconv
 5.4 AIX shared build with c-ares fails
 5.5 can't handle Unicode arguments in Windows
 5.6 cmake support gaps
 5.7 Visual Studio project gaps
 5.8 configure finding libs in wrong directory

 6. Authentication
 6.1 NTLM authentication and unicode
 6.2 MIT Kerberos for Windows build
 6.3 NTLM in system context uses wrong name
 6.4 Negotiate and Kerberos V5 need a fake user name

 7. FTP
 7.1 FTP without or slow 220 response
 7.2 FTP with CONNECT and slow server
 7.3 FTP with NOBODY and FAILONERROR
 7.4 FTP with ACCT
 7.5 ASCII FTP
 7.6 FTP with NULs in URL parts
 7.7 FTP and empty path parts in the URL
 7.8 Premature transfer end but healthy control channel

 8. TELNET
 8.1 TELNET and time limtiations don't work
 8.2 Microsoft telnet server

 9. SFTP and SCP
 9.1 SFTP doesn't do CURLOPT_POSTQUOTE correct

 10. SOCKS
 10.1 SOCKS proxy connections are done blocking
 10.2 SOCKS don't support timeouts
 10.3 FTPS over SOCKS
 10.4 active FTP over a SOCKS

 11. Internals
 11.1 Curl leaks .onion hostnames in DNS
 11.2 error buffer not set if connection to multiple addresses fails

 12. LDAP and OpenLDAP
 12.1 OpenLDAP hangs after returning results

 13 TCP/IP
 13.1 --interface for ipv6 binds to unusable IP address


==============================================================================

1. HTTP

1.1 CURLFORM_CONTENTLEN in an array

 It is not possible to pass a 64-bit value using CURLFORM_CONTENTLEN with
 CURLFORM_ARRAY, when compiled on 32-bit platforms that support 64-bit
 integers. This is because the underlying structure 'curl_forms' uses a dual
 purpose char* for storing these values in via casting. For more information
 see the now closed related issue:
 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/608

1.2 Disabling HTTP Pipelining

 Disabling HTTP Pipelining when there are ongoing transfers can lead to
 heap corruption and crash. https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1411

1.3 STARTTRANSFER time is wrong for HTTP POSTs

 Wrong STARTTRANSFER timer accounting for POST requests Timer works fine with
 GET requests, but while using POST the time for CURLINFO_STARTTRANSFER_TIME
 is wrong. While using POST CURLINFO_STARTTRANSFER_TIME minus
 CURLINFO_PRETRANSFER_TIME is near to zero every time.

 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/218
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1213

1.4 multipart formposts file name encoding

 When creating multipart formposts. The file name part can be encoded with
 something beyond ascii but currently libcurl will only pass in the verbatim
 string the app provides. There are several browsers that already do this
 encoding. The key seems to be the updated draft to RFC2231:
 https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-reschke-rfc2231-in-http-02

1.5 Expect-100 meets 417

 If an upload using Expect: 100-continue receives an HTTP 417 response, it
 ought to be automatically resent without the Expect:.  A workaround is for
 the client application to redo the transfer after disabling Expect:.
 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/archive-2008-02/0043.html

1.6 Unnecessary close when 401 received waiting for 100

 libcurl closes the connection if an HTTP 401 reply is received while it is
 waiting for the the 100-continue response.
 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2008-08/0462.html

1.7 CONNECT response larger than 16KB

 If a CONNECT response-headers are larger than BUFSIZE (16KB) when the
 connection is meant to be kept alive (like for NTLM proxy auth), the function
 will return prematurely and will confuse the rest of the HTTP protocol
 code. This should be very rare.

1.8 DNS timing is wrong for HTTP redirects

 When extracting timing information after HTTP redirects, only the last
 transfer's results are returned and not the totals:
 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/522

1.9 HTTP/2 frames while in the connection pool kill reuse

 If the server sends HTTP/2 frames (like for example an HTTP/2 PING frame) to
 curl while the connection is held in curl's connection pool, the socket will
 be found readable when considered for reuse and that makes curl think it is
 dead and then it will be closed and a new connection gets created instead.

 This is *best* fixed by adding monitoring to connections while they are kept
 in the pool so that pings can be responded to appropriately.

1.10 Strips trailing dot from host name

 When given a URL wit a trailing dot for the host name part:
 "https://example.com./", libcurl will strip off the dot and use the name
 without a dot internally and send it dot-less in HTTP Host: headers and in
 the TLS SNI field.

 The HTTP part violates RFC 7230 section 5.4 but the SNI part is accordance
 with RFC 6066 section 3.

 URLs using these trailing dots are very rare in the wild and we have not seen
 or gotten any real-world problems with such URLs reported. The popular
 browsers seem to have stayed with not stripping the dot for both uses (thus
 they violate RFC 6066 instead of RFC 7230).

 Daniel took the discussion to the HTTPbis mailing list in March 2016:
 https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2016JanMar/0430.html but
 there was not major rush or interest to fix this. The impression I get is
 that most HTTP people rather not rock the boat now and instead prioritize web
 compatibility rather than to strictly adhere to these RFCs.

 Our current approach allows a knowing client to send a custom HTTP header
 with the dot added.

 It can also be noted that while adding a trailing dot to the host name in
 most (all?) cases will make the name resolve to the same set of IP addresses,
 many HTTP servers will not happily accept the trailing dot there unless that
 has been specificly configured to be a fine virtual host.

 If URLs with trailing dots for host names become more popular or even just
 used more than for just plain fun experiments, I'm sure we will have reason
 to go back and reconsider.

 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/716 for the discussion.

1.11 CURLOPT_SEEKFUNCTION not called with CURLFORM_STREAM

 I'm using libcurl to POST form data using a FILE* with the CURLFORM_STREAM
 option of curl_formadd(). I've noticed that if the connection drops at just
 the right time, the POST is reattempted without the data from the file. It
 seems like the file stream position isn't getting reset to the beginning of
 the file. I found the CURLOPT_SEEKFUNCTION option and set that with a
 function that performs an fseek() on the FILE*. However, setting that didn't
 seem to fix the issue or even get called. See
 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/768


2. TLS

2.1 Hangs with PolarSSL

 "curl_easy_perform hangs with imap and PolarSSL"
 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/334

 Most likely, a fix similar to commit c111178bd4 (for mbedTLS) is
 necessary. Or if we just wait a little longer we'll rip out all support for
 PolarSSL instead...

2.2 CURLINFO_SSL_VERIFYRESULT has limited support

 CURLINFO_SSL_VERIFYRESULT is only implemented for the OpenSSL and NSS
 backends, so relying on this information in a generic app is flaky.

2.3 DER in keychain

 Curl doesn't recognize certificates in DER format in keychain, but it works
 with PEM.  https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1065

2.4 GnuTLS backend skips really long certificate fields

 libcurl calls gnutls_x509_crt_get_dn() with a fixed buffer size and if the
 field is too long in the cert, it'll just return an error and the field will
 be displayed blank.


3. Email protocols

3.1 IMAP SEARCH ALL truncated response

 IMAP "SEARCH ALL" truncates output on large boxes. "A quick search of the
 code reveals that pingpong.c contains some truncation code, at line 408, when
 it deems the server response to be too large truncating it to 40 characters"
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1366

3.2 No disconnect command

 The disconnect commands (LOGOUT and QUIT) may not be sent by IMAP, POP3 and
 SMTP if a failure occurs during the authentication phase of a connection.

3.3 SMTP to multiple recipients

 When sending data to multiple recipients, curl will abort and return failure
 if one of the recipients indicate failure (on the "RCPT TO"
 command). Ordinary mail programs would proceed and still send to the ones
 that can receive data. This is subject for change in the future.
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1116

3.4 POP3 expects "CRLF.CRLF" eob for some single-line responses

 You have to tell libcurl not to expect a body, when dealing with one line
 response commands. Please see the POP3 examples and test cases which show
 this for the NOOP and DELE commands. https://curl.haxx.se/bug/?i=740


4. Command line

4.1 -J with %-encoded file nameas

 -J/--remote-header-name doesn't decode %-encoded file names. RFC6266 details
 how it should be done. The can of worm is basically that we have no charset
 handling in curl and ascii >=128 is a challenge for us. Not to mention that
 decoding also means that we need to check for nastiness that is attempted,
 like "../" sequences and the like. Probably everything to the left of any
 embedded slashes should be cut off.
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1294

4.2 -J with -C - fails

 When using -J (with -O), automatically resumed downloading together with "-C
 -" fails. Without -J the same command line works! This happens because the
 resume logic is worked out before the target file name (and thus its
 pre-transfer size) has been figured out!
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1169

4.3 --retry and transfer timeouts

 If using --retry and the transfer timeouts (possibly due to using -m or
 -y/-Y) the next attempt doesn't resume the transfer properly from what was
 downloaded in the previous attempt but will truncate and restart at the
 original position where it was at before the previous failed attempt. See
 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2008-01/0080.html and Mandriva bug report
 https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22565


5. Build and portability issues

5.1 Windows Borland compiler

 When building with the Windows Borland compiler, it fails because the "tlib"
 tool doesn't support hyphens (minus signs) in file names and we have such in
 the build.  https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=1222

5.2 curl-config --libs contains private details

 "curl-config --libs" will include details set in LDFLAGS when configure is
 run that might be needed only for building libcurl. Further, curl-config
 --cflags suffers from the same effects with CFLAGS/CPPFLAGS.

5.3 libidn and old iconv

 Test case 165 might fail on a system which has libidn present, but with an
 old iconv version (2.1.3 is a known bad version), since it doesn't recognize
 the charset when named ISO8859-1. Changing the name to ISO-8859-1 makes the
 test pass, but instead makes it fail on Solaris hosts that use its native
 iconv.

5.4 AIX shared build with c-ares fails

 curl version 7.12.2 fails on AIX if compiled with --enable-ares.  The
 workaround is to combine --enable-ares with --disable-shared

5.5 can't handle Unicode arguments in Windows

 If a URL or filename can't be encoded using the user's current codepage then
 it can only be encoded properly in the Unicode character set. Windows uses
 UTF-16 encoding for Unicode and stores it in wide characters, however curl
 and libcurl are not equipped for that at the moment. And, except for Cygwin,
 Windows can't use UTF-8 as a locale.

  https://curl.haxx.se/bug/?i=345
  https://curl.haxx.se/bug/?i=731

5.6 cmake support gaps

 The cmake build setup lacks several features that the autoconf build
 offers. This includes:

  - symbol hiding when the shared library is built
  - use of correct soname for the shared library build
  - support for several TLS backends are missing
  - the unit tests cause link failures in regular non-static builds
  - no nghttp2 check

5.7 Visual Studio project gaps

 The Visual Studio projects lack some features that the autoconf and nmake
 builds offer, such as the following:

  - support for zlib and nghttp2
  - use of static runtime libraries
  - add the test suite components

 In addition to this the following could be implemented:

  - support for other development IDEs
  - add PATH environment variables for third-party DLLs

5.8 configure finding libs in wrong directory

 When the configure script checks for third-party libraries, it adds those
 directories to the LDFLAGS variable and then tries linking to see if it
 works. When successful, the found directory is kept in the LDFLAGS variable
 when the scripts continues to execute and do more tests and possibly check
 for more libraries.

 This can make subsequent checks for libraries wrongly detect another
 installtion in a directory that was previously added to LDFLAGS by another
 library check!

 A possibly better way to do these checks would be keep the pristine LDFLAGS
 even after successful checks and instead add those verified paths to a
 separate variable that only after all library checks have been performed get
 appended to LDFLAGS.


6. Authentication

6.1 NTLM authentication and unicode

 NTLM authentication involving unicode user name or password only works
 properly if built with UNICODE defined together with the WinSSL/schannel
 backend. The original problem was mentioned in:
 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2009-10/0024.html
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=896

 The WinSSL/schannel version verified to work as mentioned in
 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2012-07/0073.html

6.2 MIT Kerberos for Windows build

 libcurl fails to build with MIT Kerberos for Windows (KfW) due to KfW's
 library header files exporting symbols/macros that should be kept private to
 the KfW library. See ticket #5601 at http://krbdev.mit.edu/rt/

6.3 NTLM in system context uses wrong name

 NTLM authentication using SSPI (on Windows) when (lib)curl is running in
 "system context" will make it use wrong(?) user name - at least when compared
 to what winhttp does. See https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=535

6.4 Negotiate and Kerberos V5 need a fake user name

 In order to get Negotiate (SPNEGO) authentication to work in HTTP or Kerberos
 V5 in the e-mail protocols, you need to  provide a (fake) user name (this
 concerns both curl and the lib) because the code wrongly only considers
 authentication if there's a user name provided by setting
 conn->bits.user_passwd in url.c  https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=440 How?
 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2004-08/0182.html A possible solution is to
 either modify this variable to be set or introduce a variable such as
 new conn->bits.want_authentication which is set when any of the authentication
 options are set.


7. FTP

7.1 FTP without or slow 220 response

 If a connection is made to a FTP server but the server then just never sends
 the 220 response or otherwise is dead slow, libcurl will not acknowledge the
 connection timeout during that phase but only the "real" timeout - which may
 surprise users as it is probably considered to be the connect phase to most
 people. Brought up (and is being misunderstood) in:
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=856

7.2 FTP with CONNECT and slow server

 When doing FTP over a socks proxy or CONNECT through HTTP proxy and the multi
 interface is used, libcurl will fail if the (passive) TCP connection for the
 data transfer isn't more or less instant as the code does not properly wait
 for the connect to be confirmed. See test case 564 for a first shot at a test
 case.

7.3 FTP with NOBODY and FAILONERROR

 It seems sensible to be able to use CURLOPT_NOBODY and CURLOPT_FAILONERROR
 with FTP to detect if a file exists or not, but it is not working:
 https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2008-07/0295.html

7.4 FTP with ACCT

 When doing an operation over FTP that requires the ACCT command (but not when
 logging in), the operation will fail since libcurl doesn't detect this and
 thus fails to issue the correct command:
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=635

7.5 ASCII FTP

 FTP ASCII transfers do not follow RFC959. They don't convert the data
 accordingly (not for sending nor for receiving). RFC 959 section 3.1.1.1
 clearly describes how this should be done:

    The sender converts the data from an internal character representation to
    the standard 8-bit NVT-ASCII representation (see the Telnet
    specification).  The receiver will convert the data from the standard
    form to his own internal form.

 Since 7.15.4 at least line endings are converted.

7.6 FTP with NULs in URL parts

 FTP URLs passed to curl may contain NUL (0x00) in the RFC 1738 <user>,
 <password>, and <fpath> components, encoded as "%00".  The problem is that
 curl_unescape does not detect this, but instead returns a shortened C string.
 From a strict FTP protocol standpoint, NUL is a valid character within RFC
 959 <string>, so the way to handle this correctly in curl would be to use a
 data structure other than a plain C string, one that can handle embedded NUL
 characters.  From a practical standpoint, most FTP servers would not
 meaningfully support NUL characters within RFC 959 <string>, anyway (e.g.,
 Unix pathnames may not contain NUL).

7.7 FTP and empty path parts in the URL

 libcurl ignores empty path parts in FTP URLs, whereas RFC1738 states that
 such parts should be sent to the server as 'CWD ' (without an argument).  The
 only exception to this rule, is that we knowingly break this if the empty
 part is first in the path, as then we use the double slashes to indicate that
 the user wants to reach the root dir (this exception SHALL remain even when
 this bug is fixed).

7.8 Premature transfer end but healthy control channel

 When 'multi_done' is called before the transfer has been completed the normal
 way, it is considered a "premature" transfer end. In this situation, libcurl
 closes the connection assuming it doesn't know the state of the connection so
 it can't be reused for subsequent requests.

 With FTP however, this isn't necessarily true but there are a bunch of
 situations (listed in the ftp_done code) where it *could* keep the connection
 alive even in this situation - but the current code doesn't. Fixing this would
 allow libcurl to reuse FTP connections better.

8. TELNET

8.1 TELNET and time limtiations don't work

 When using telnet, the time limitation options don't work.
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=846

8.2 Microsoft telnet server

 There seems to be a problem when connecting to the Microsoft telnet server.
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=649


9. SFTP and SCP

9.1 SFTP doesn't do CURLOPT_POSTQUOTE correct

 When libcurl sends CURLOPT_POSTQUOTE commands when connected to a SFTP server
 using the multi interface, the commands are not being sent correctly and
 instead the connection is "cancelled" (the operation is considered done)
 prematurely. There is a half-baked (busy-looping) patch provided in the bug
 report but it cannot be accepted as-is. See
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=748


10. SOCKS

10.1 SOCKS proxy connections are done blocking

 Both SOCKS5 and SOCKS4 proxy connections are done blocking, which is very bad
 when used with the multi interface.

10.2 SOCKS don't support timeouts

 The SOCKS4 connection codes don't properly acknowledge (connect) timeouts.
 According to bug #1556528, even the SOCKS5 connect code does not do it right:
 https://curl.haxx.se/bug/view.cgi?id=604

 When connecting to a SOCK proxy, the (connect) timeout is not properly
 acknowledged after the actual TCP connect (during the SOCKS "negotiate"
 phase).

10.3 FTPS over SOCKS

 libcurl doesn't support FTPS over a SOCKS proxy.

10.4 active FTP over a SOCKS

 libcurl doesn't support active FTP over a SOCKS proxy


11. Internals

11.1 Curl leaks .onion hostnames in DNS

 Curl sends DNS requests for hostnames with a .onion TLD. This leaks
 information about what the user is attempting to access, and violates this
 requirement of RFC7686: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7686

 Issue: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/543

11.2 error buffer not set if connection to multiple addresses fails

 If you ask libcurl to resolve a hostname like example.com to IPv6 addresses
 only. But you only have IPv4 connectivity. libcurl will correctly fail with
 CURLE_COULDNT_CONNECT. But the error buffer set by CURLOPT_ERRORBUFFER
 remains empty. Issue: https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/544


12. LDAP and OpenLDAP

12.1 OpenLDAP hangs after returning results

 By configuration defaults, openldap automatically chase referrals on
 secondary socket descriptors. The OpenLDAP backend is asynchronous and thus
 should monitor all socket descriptors involved. Currently, these secondary
 descriptors are not monitored, causing openldap library to never receive
 data from them.

 As a temporary workaround, disable referrals chasing by configuration.

 The fix is not easy: proper automatic referrals chasing requires a
 synchronous bind callback and monitoring an arbitrary number of socket
 descriptors for a single easy handle (currently limited to 5).

 Generic LDAP is synchronous: OK.

 See https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/622 and
     https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2016-01/0101.html


13 TCP/IP

13.1 --interface for ipv6 binds to unusable IP address

 Since IPv6 provides a lot of addresses with different scope, binding to an
 IPv6 address needs to take the proper care so that it doesn't bind to a
 locally scoped address as that is bound to fail.

 https://github.com/curl/curl/issues/686