Address review/security findings in the 2.21.0 error-detail feature:
- Keepalive drain no longer erases the terminal detail: capture/clear is
skipped for STATUS_KEEPALIVE so the reason the peer just sent survives the
owed keepalive replies.
- Replace the capture path with a dedicated protocol_receive_error_detail:
the declared length is validated against MAX_ERROR_DETAIL_BYTES before any
allocation, over-cap bodies are drained through a fixed scratch buffer (so
the stream never desyncs), in-cap bodies read straight into the thread-local
detail buffer, and session->max_alloc is never raised. Lengths beyond
MAX_STRING_SIZE are treated as a fatal framing error.
- The detail body now honors the caller's deadline (timed/keepalive paths) and
polls the abort callback between drain chunks.
- Escape peer-controlled detail text with output_escape before logging it in
client_send.c and config.c.
- Clear io_error_detail in io_set_fds so a new connection on the same thread
cannot inherit a stale reason.
- Add unit tests for the keepalive-survival, over-cap drain, absurd-length
fatal framing, and deadline-clamped body read cases.
Today a server rejection sends a bare STATUS_ERROR and the reason only
reaches the server log, so the client cannot say why a transfer was
refused. Add an optional, bounded server->client error-detail frame:
- Status gains STATUS_ERROR_DETAIL appended LAST so existing wire
values are unchanged.
- send_error_detail(fd, msg) sends STATUS_ERROR_DETAIL followed by the
existing length-prefixed string primitive, slicing over-long messages
to MAX_ERROR_DETAIL_BYTES (4096).
- receive_status() (and the timed/keepalive status readers) always
consume the detail body and map the status back to STATUS_ERROR,
capturing the text into a thread-local buffer exposed by
protocol_last_error(); a bare STATUS_ERROR leaves it cleared. Every
existing call site keeps working and the stream cannot desync.
- Upgrade the daemon module gate / config validation (config.c), the
final transfer failure (server.c) and receiver-side path/node
validation (file_receive.c) to send a concrete reason; surface it on
the client in client_send.c/config.c.
- Bump PROTOCOL_VERSION to 2.21.0 (CMake VERSION, CHANGELOG, docs) and
update the pinned config wire golden hash / CLI-version tests.
- Add tests/test_protocol_error.c covering mapping+capture, the
over-long bound, bare-error clearing, and thread-locality.
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