libressl: netcat doesn't work on macos

[sdier]

Describe the bug
netcat from libressl doesn't work on macos

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. as root: dtruss -W nc
2. nc localhost 22
3. note that the socket open shown in dtruss shows error 41

Expected behavior
Connects.

Additional context
I have opened libressl/portable#631

I don't think anyone actually ever used this successfully on macos. I suspect it should be disabled from building for this platform if possible until its fixed so nobody else has to go through the debugging.

Notify maintainers
@fpletz
@thoughtpolice

Metadata

• system: "x86_64-darwin"
• host os: Darwin 19.6.0, macOS
• multi-user?: no
• sandbox: yes
• version: nix-env (Nix) 2.3.6
• channels(sdier): "home-manager, nixpkgs-21.03pre246624.cfed29bfcb2"
• nixpkgs: /Users/sdier/.nix-defexpr/channels/nixpkgs

Maintainer information:

# a list of nixpkgs attributes affected by the problem
attribute:
# a list of nixos modules affected by the problem
module: libressl.nc

[sdier]

"I don't think anyone actually ever used this successfully on macos"

Actually I do not know if error 41 was always returned for this combination of options.

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[risicle]

A painful one.

If we were to disable this for macos, might we have another means of providing macos users with a bsd-style netcat?

[risicle]

Alternatively if we were to patch it, would it be enough to pick higher bits for SOCK_CLOEXEC and SOCK_NONBLOCK in https://github.com/libressl-portable/portable/blob/c054aaea36b0b797dbcc65b5c49bf69b921e1e08/include/compat/sys/socket.h in the hopes of avoiding collisions?

[risicle]

The other route for BSD netcat on macos is of course https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/netcat/, but nobody has yet built an apple-source-releases derivation for it.

[risicle]

Oh and I tried a naive switch of the SOCK_CLOEXEC/SOCK_NONBLOCK bits the other day (up to.. 0x4000000 and 0x2000000 i think?) and it didn't seem to work.

[Gabriella439]

If somebody running across this issue needs a work-around: you can use pkgs.netcat-gnu instead of pkgs.netcat. pkgs.netcat-gnu works on macOS

[risicle]

The issue is that netcat-gnu isn't quite the same. It doesn't support e.g. SOCKS5 in the same way.

[sebastianblunt]

This should be fixed by the update to libressl 3.5.2.