SignFinal error no longer returned, instead returning a PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line error

[ryanseys]

In fooling around with iojs v1.0.1, I ran the unit tests for GoogleCloudPlatform/gcloud-node which were passing on latest node 0.10.x and now a single test is no longer passing.

It appears that when attempting to sign a PEM, during a failure, a SignFinal error is no longer returned. Instead the error message returned is now error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line. I've monkey-patched the test here: googleapis/google-cloud-node#346 but this doesn't handle any other sort of SignFinal error.

I looked at the changelog and it gave no indication that this was a breaking change so I'm assuming it was an unintentional change.

[bnoordhuis]

If you can put together a standalone test case (i.e. a single script that uses only core modules), I or @indutny will take a look. Thanks.

[ryanseys]

Certainly! Here's a standalone test case:

var crypto = require('crypto');
var pem = 'this is a bad key with no start line';

var sign = crypto.createSign('RSA-SHA256');
sign.update('abcdef');  // data
var sig = sign.sign(pem, 'hex');

On io.js v1.0.1 stacktrace:

# ~ $ node crypto-test.js
crypto.js:309
  var ret = this._handle.sign(toBuf(key), null, passphrase);
                         ^
Error: error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line
    at Error (native)
    at Sign.sign (crypto.js:309:26)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/ryanseys/crypto-test.js:6:16)
    at Module._compile (module.js:446:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:464:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:341:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:296:12)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:487:10)
    at startup (node.js:111:16)
    at node.js:809:3

On node 0.10.33 stacktrace:

# ~ $ /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.10.33_1/bin/node crypto-test.js
140735116468992:error:0906D06C:PEM routines:PEM_read_bio:no start line:../deps/openssl/openssl/crypto/pem/pem_lib.c:703:Expecting: ANY PRIVATE KEY

crypto.js:429
  var ret = this._binding.sign(toBuf(key));
                          ^
Error: SignFinal error
    at Sign.sign (crypto.js:429:27)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/ryanseys/crypto-test.js:6:16)
    at Module._compile (module.js:456:26)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:474:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:356:32)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:312:12)
    at Function.Module.runMain (module.js:497:10)
    at startup (node.js:119:16)
    at node.js:906:3

[bnoordhuis]

Thanks, I see what you're saying now. It's an intentional change actually, one that also exists in joyent/node@v0.11 (can't find the commit just now but the change was made sometime last year.)

[ryanseys]

Ah, okay. I kinda figured that's what happened. I should have checked with the latest node 0.11.x first. Cheers!