Searching for failures with your Taskserver setup.
Here is a list of problems you may encounter, with the most common ones listed first.
The single most common problem has been that the Taskserver Setup Instructions were not properly followed. Please review the steps you took.
It is always a good idea to make sure that you are using the latest release of Taskwarrior and Taskserver, not just because bugs are fixed that may help you, but also because the solutions below are geared toward the current releases.
If you upgrade from an older release of Taskserver, you will need to follow the upgrade instructions.
You have a version of Taskwarrior older than 2.3.0, which means there was no sync command, and you are seeing a list filtered by the search term 'sync'.
Upgrading is the only solution.
You are using version 2.3.0 or later, but the Taskwarrior binary was compiled without GnuTLS support.
If you installed Taskwarrior using your OS's package manager, you may be suffering from an out of date package. Prod your OS's package maintainer for an update.
Recent releases make GnuTLS support opt-out instead of opt-in, so upgrading to the latest version may help.
Otherwise, you will need to build Taskwarrior from the latest source tarball, following the instructions in the INSTALL file.
If you are a developer, do that.
If you are not, then installing a development environment is probably not something
you want to do, in which case contact your OS's package maintainer.
Verify that your Taskwarrior was built with GnuTLS support by running task diagnostics:
$ task diagnostics | grep libgnutls
libgnutls: 3.3.18
This means the Taskwarrior setting taskd.server=<host>:<port> refers to a host name that cannot be seen by Taskwarrior.
<port> traffic?
Taskserver may not be running on <host>.
Check with ps -leaf | grep taskd.
Sometimes the error message is misleading, please check "Handshake failed" as well.
By default, port 53589 is used, but whichever you chose must be open on the server.
If you are unable to open firewall ports, you can use an SSH Tunnel to route port 53589 traffic over port 22:
$ ssh -L localport:dsthost:dstport user@example.com
There are many reasons that the TLS handshake can fail.
Please do the following on your client:
$ openssl s_client -CAfile .task/ca.cert.pem -host HOST -port PORT
The result should be something like Verify return code: 0 (ok).
When you generated certificates, you modified a vars file, in particular the CN=<name> setting.
That name must match the output of hostname -f on the server for the certificate to validate.
$ certtool -i < server.cert.pem | grep Subject:
$ openssl x509 -noout -in server.cert.pem -subject
Additionally, that name must also be used in the taskd.server=<host>:<port> setting for Taskwarrior.
Otherwise you'll need taskd.trust=ignore hostname.
If you are using a self-signed certificate, did you specify it using the taskd.ca setting?
Setting taskd.ciphers can force the use of different ciphers.
Use gnutls-cli --list to see a list of installed ciphers, and confirm that there is overlap between client and server.
There needs to be a cipher that is available to both, otherwise they cannot communicate.
Certificates have expiration dates, and if you followed our instructions, you created a certificate that is valid for one year. Check your certificate with this command:
$ certtool -i --infile ~/.task/<YOUR NAME>.cert.pem
If your certificate has expired, you need a new one. You may also need to regenerate expired server certificates.
Note that creating certificates that never expire is a bad idea. Certificates may be compromised. A certificate that is considered secure today, may not be considered secure in a year. Is the key length you chose something that will remain suitable in the future? Will the algorithms you chose remain secure? For these reasons, choose an expiration date that lets you reevaluate your choices in the relatively near future.
As a security product, it is imperative that you keep your GnuTLS up to date.
As with many security products, GnuTLS is maintained by a responsible and quick-responding team that takes security very seriously. Benefit from their diligence by keeping your GnuTLS up to date.
We have received reports of issues with older GnuTLS releases. Specifically, version 2.12.20 has problems validating certificates under certain conditions. Newer releases have addressed memory leaks that were able to take down Taskserver.
Please keep in mind that you have to recompile Taskserver completely to benefit from the new version.
Upgrading GnuTLS does nothing to upgrade taskd -- it has to be rebuilt from scratch, which means:
$ cd taskd.git
$ rm CMakeCache.txt
$ cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=release .
$ make
$ sudo make install
This can then be verified using taskd diagnostics.
You skipped the important step of running:
$ task sync init
This performs an initial upload of your tasks, and sets up a local sync key, which identifies the last sync transaction.
Please note that older Taskwarrior versions (before 2.5.1) only sync the pending tasks and not all tasks.
There is a difference between hostname and IP address, honestly. We are referencing the hostname throughout the documentation because you need a valid hostname for the certificate and working name resolution for the client to connect to the server.
So please use the hostname where you are advised to do it!
You may wish to try and debug the problem yourself. You will probably not. But if you do, here is how.
Both Taskwarrior and Taskserver have a diagnostics command, the purpose of which is to show you relevant troubleshooting details.
Additionally it will indicate problems directly, for example, it will tell you if your cert/key files are not readable.
The output from diagnostics is intended to be included in bug reports, and doing so saves you a lot of time, because it's the first thing we'll ask for.
$ task diagnostics
...
$ taskd diagnostics
...
diagnostics commands carefully, there may be several types of problems mentioned, which need to be addressed before going further.
The next step would be to run the server in debug mode. First shutdown your Taskserver, then launch it interactively:
$ taskdctl stop
...
$ taskd server
...
You can hit Ctrl-C to stop this server.
For highly verbose output, try this:
$ taskd server --debug --debug.tls=2
...
Similarly, Taskwarrior has a verbose debug mode, and debug TLS mode:
$ task rc.debug=1 rc.debug.tls=2 sync
...
Show the IP addresses (and network interfaces) on the system.
$ ifconfig -a
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.1.100 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255
ether 52:54:a2:01:25:9d txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 42091 bytes 46300226 (44.1 MiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 17689 bytes 2606921 (2.4 MiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
loop txqueuelen 0 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 120 bytes 43540 (42.5 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 120 bytes 43540 (42.5 KiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
$ ip addr list
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP qlen 1000
link/ether 52:54:a2:01:25:9d brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.100/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
Shows which process listen on the port, shows the user and – more important – the IP address / interface the server runs on.
$ lsof -i TCP:53589 -s TCP:LISTEN # as taskserver user or with sudo
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
taskd 1167 taskserver 4u IPv4 16682 0t0 TCP taskd.example.net:53589 (LISTEN)
$ netstat -tl | grep 53589
tcp 0 0 taskd.example.net:53589 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
Shows the hostname from "General Reachability" (Client section) after CN=
$ openssl x509 -noout -in server.cert.pem -subject
subject= /CN=taskd.example.net/O=My own IT
$ certtool -i --infile=server.cert.pem | grep Subject:
Subject: CN=taskd.example.net,O=My own IT
Shows server diagnostic data.
$ taskd diagnostics --data /path/to/taskserver/data/
taskd 1.2.0
Platform: Linux
Hostname: taskd.example.net
Compiler
...
Build Features
...
Configuration
TASKDDATA: /path/to/taskserver/data
root: /path/to/taskserver/data/, readable, writable
config: /path/to/taskserver/data//config, readable, writable546 bytes
CA: /path/to/taskserver/data/ca.cert.pem, readable, 2017 bytes
Certificate: /path/to/taskserver/data/server.cert.pem, readable, 2004 bytes
Key: /path/to/taskserver/data/server.key.pem, readable, 10996 bytes
CRL: /path/to/taskserver/data/server.crl.pem, readable, 1080 bytes
Log: /path/to/taskserver/data/taskd.log (found)
PID File: /path/to/taskserver/data/taskd.pid (missing)
Server: taskd.example.net:53589
Max Request: 1048576 bytes
Ciphers:
Trust: strict
Show if the hostname is reachable (if ping is not blocked).
$ ping taskd.example.net
PING taskd.example.net (192.168.1.100) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from taskd.example.net (192.168.1.100): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.118 ms
64 bytes from taskd.example.net (192.168.1.100): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.066 ms
64 bytes from taskd.example.net (192.168.1.100): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.064 ms
64 bytes from taskd.example.net (192.168.1.100): icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.065 ms
^C
--- taskd.example.net ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.064/0.078/0.118/0.023 ms
$ nmap -sP taskd.example.net
Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2016-05-15 11:24 CEST
Nmap scan report for taskd.example.net (192.168.1.100)
Host is up (0.00012s latency).
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.01 seconds
Shows if the port is reachable by client (or locally).
$ telnet taskd.example.net 53589
Trying 192.168.1.100...
Connected to taskd.example.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
^CConnection closed by foreign host.
$ sudo nmap -p 53589 taskd.example.net
Starting Nmap 7.12 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2016-05-15 11:28 CEST
Nmap scan report for taskd.example.net (192.168.1.100)
Host is up (0.036s latency).
PORT STATE SERVICE
53589/tcp open unknown
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.18 seconds
$ openssl s_client -host taskd.example.net -port 53589
CONNECTED(00000003)
...
Shows the ip address of hostname. Should match one of the IP addresses found in "IP Address" (Server section) and the server should be bound to that address see "Ports" (Server Section).
$ host taskd.example.net
taskd.example.net has address 192.168.1.100
$ nslookup taskd.example.net # checks only nameservers
Server: 192.168.178.1
Address: 192.168.178.1#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: taskd.example.net
Address: 192.168.1.100
Shows client diagnostic data.
task diagnostics
task 2.6.0
Platform: Linux
...
Compiler
...
Build Features
...
Configuration
File: /home/user/.taskrc (found), 2428 bytes, mode 100664
Data: /home/user/.task (found), dir, mode 40775
Locking: Enabled
GC: Enabled
$EDITOR: vim
Server: taskd.example.net:53589
CA: ~/.task/ca.cert.pem, readable, 3741 bytes
Trust: strict
Certificate: ~/.task/Dirk_Deimeke.cert.pem, readable, 3724 bytes
Key: ~/.task/Dirk_Deimeke.key.pem, readable, 25364 bytes
Ciphers: NORMAL
Creds: My own IT/Dirk Deimeke/************************************
Hooks
...
Tests
...
As a last resort, ask for help. But please make sure you have carefully reviewed your setup, and gone through the checks above before asking. No one wants to lead you through the steps above to discover that you didn't.
We'll ask you to provide the diagnostics output for both Taskwarrior and Taskserver, then we're going to go through the steps above, because this is our checklist also.
There are several ways of getting help:
There are several ways of getting help: