On both Unix and Windows, we now redirect the local proxy command's
standard error into a third pipe; data received from that pipe is
broken up at newlines and logged in the Event Log. So if the proxy
command emits any error messages in the course of failing to connect
to something, you now have a fighting chance of finding out what went
wrong.
This feature is disabled in command-line tools like PSFTP and Plink,
on the basis that in that situation it seems more likely that the user
would expect standard-error output to go to the ordinary standard
error in the ordinary way. Only GUI PuTTY catches it and logs it like
this, because it either doesn't have a standard error at all (on
Windows) or is likely to be pointing it at some completely unhelpful
session log file (under X).
I've defined a new value for the 'int type' parameter passed to
plug_log(), which proxy sockets will use to pass their backend
information on how the setup of their proxied connections are going.
I've implemented support for the new type code in all _nontrivial_
plug log functions (which, conveniently, are precisely the ones I just
refactored into backend_socket_log); the ones which just throw all
their log data away anyway will do that to the new code as well.
We use the new type code to log the DNS lookup and connection setup
for connecting to a networked proxy, and also to log the exact command
string sent down Telnet proxy connections (so the user can easily
debug mistakes in the configured format string) and the exact command
executed when spawning a local proxy process. (The latter was already
supported on Windows by a bodgy logging call taking advantage of
Windows in particular having no front end pointer; I've converted that
into a sensible use of the new plug_log facility, and done the same
thing on Unix.)
I'm about to want to make a change to all those functions at once, and
since they're almost identical, it seemed easiest to pull them out
into a common helper. The new source file be_misc.c is intended to
contain helper code common to all network back ends (crypto and
non-crypto, in particular), and initially it contains a
backend_socket_log() function which is the common part of ssh_log(),
telnet_log(), rlogin_log() etc.