# TLSA Module

## Admin Guide

### Overview

This is a pseudo module that builds TLS module compiled statically against libssl and libcrypto (from OpenSSL project). Its C code files simply include the files from TLS module, setting a different module name.

It is a replacement for tls module, with the same modparams and functions. Just replace ' loadmodule "tls.so" ' with ' loadmodule "tlsa.so" ' and ' modparam("tls", ...) ' with ' modparam("tlsa", ...) '. See the docs of TLS module for all the details related to its parameters, functions, rpc commands, variables, ...

The benefit of this module is having the libssl and libcrypto embedded in the module object file, thus not sharing the SSL/TLS context with any other modules that may link indirectly to libssl (e.g., like http_client that links against libcurl, which uses libssl). In this way, the initialization of SSL context (e.g., setting shared memory management functions) by tlsa module does not impact the other modules.

Another benefit could be the ability to link a specific libssl version (e.g., using source build), not being bound to the version shipped with the operating system.

The drawback is that updates to the libssl done via operating system upgrades are not reflected in the tlsa module. It has to be recompiled every time a new libssl version is installed and it is wanted to be used by tlsa module.

NOTE: the module is known to work to be compiled with GCC on Linux (tested on Debian Stable 10.x). Other compilers (e.g., clang, icc) may not support same static linking options. Also, some operating systems may provide only dynamic libssl and libcrypto libraries via their packages.

NOTE: edit the Makefile in the module folder and update it accordingly to set the path to libssl and libcrypto libraries specific to own system when not wanting to use "pkg-config" (e.g., when having these libraries compiled from sources).