F42 Change Proposal: dropping Of cert.pem file (System-Wide)

Wiki - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/dropingOfCertPemFile
Discussion thread -
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f42-change-proposal-dropping-of-cert-pem-file-system-wide/135119

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes
process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive
community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved
by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

== Summary ==
In order to increase the performance of OpenSSL by default using
directory-hash format we need to drop the /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem file
to prevent it from being loaded by default.

== Owner ==
* Name: [[User:Fkrenzel| František Krenželok]]
* Email: fkrenzel@redhat.com


== Detailed Description ==
In order to improve the loading time of OpenSSL, a directory-hash
support was added to ca-certificates. In order for OpenSSL to use the
directory-hash format by default we need to stop it from trying to
load /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem by deleting it.

== Feedback ==


== Benefit to Fedora ==
Applications using OpenSSL(possibly other libraries as well) will
benefit from much faster initialization of OpenSSL.

== Scope ==
* Other developers:
Any package loading the root certificates from `/etc/pki/tls/cert.pem`
file need to preferably use the defaults of the library or if they
must, use the `/etc/pki/ca-trust/extracted/pem/tls-ca-bundle.pem` file
instead.

* Release engineering: [https://pagure.io/releng/issues #Releng issue number]
* Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
* Alignment with the Fedora Strategy: neither does nor doesn't

== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
Once this change is intergrated, the packages/software using
`/etc/pki/tls/cert.pem` as a root certificate bundle file might
encounter connectivity issues.

== How To Test ==
Target behavior: OpenSSL initialization takes less time when the file
isn't present compared to it being there.

1. The following will create a symlink for testing after the change
has been integrated(i.e. the `.../tls/cert.pem` file is missing)

`ln -s /etc/pki/ca-trust/extracted/pem/tls-ca-bundle.pem /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem`

2. Test the time of OpenSSL initialization or a package using it with
and without the aforementioned symlink.
(If there is no difference for package then it is most likely due to
OpenSSL not being configured to search for certs in default location)

== User Experience ==
Packages using a OpenSSL will have faster initialization time.

== Dependencies ==
Any package using `/etc/pki/tls/cert.pem` file are affected. It is
required that the maintainers change this so that user experience is
not compromised.

== Contingency Plan ==
* Contingency mechanism: We will postpone the change if majority or
critical package owners will be unable to make appropriate changes.
* Contingency deadline: before end of beta freeze(2025-02-18).
* Blocks release? The feature doesn't block release.

== Documentation ==

The change is documented as a part of ca-certificates package changelog.

== Release Notes ==
The /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem file has been deprecated

--
Aoife Moloney

Fedora Operations Architect

Fedora Project

Matrix: @amoloney:fedora.im

IRC: amoloney

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