path: root/Documentation/networking/ethertap.txt

Ethertap programming mini-HOWTO
-------------------------------

The ethertap driver was written by Jay Schulist <jschlst@turbolinux.com>,
you should contact him for further information. This document was written by
bert hubert <bert.hubert@netherlabs.nl>. Updates are welcome.

What ethertap can do for you
----------------------------

Ethertap allows you to easily run your own network stack from userspace.
Tunnels can benefit greatly from this. You can also use it to do network
experiments. The alternative would be to use a raw socket to send data and
use libpcap to receive it. Using ethertap saves you this multiplicity and
also does ARP for you if you want.

The more technical blurb:

Ethertap provides packet reception and transmission for user space programs.
It can be viewed as a simple Ethernet device, which instead of receiving
packets from a network wire, it receives them from user space.

Ethertap can be used for anything from AppleTalk to IPX to even building
bridging tunnels. It also has many other general purpose uses.

Configuring your kernel
-----------------------

Firstly, you need this in Networking Options:

	#
	# Code maturity level options
	#
	CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL=y

Then you need Netlink support:

	CONFIG_NETLINK=y

This allows the kernel to exchange data with userspace applications. There
are two ways of doing this, the new way works with netlink sockets and I
have no experience with that yet. ANK uses it in his excellent iproute2
package, see for example rtmon.c. iproute2 can be found on
ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iproute2*

The new way is described, partly in netlink(7), available on 
http://www.europe.redhat.com/documentation/man-pages/man7/netlink.7.php3

There is also a Netlink-HOWTO, available on http://snafu.freedom.org/linux2.2/docs/netlink-HOWTO.html
Sadly I know of no code using ethertap with this new interface.

The older way works by opening character special files with major node 36.
Enable this with:

	CONFIG_NETLINK_DEV=m

Please be advised that this support is going to be dropped somewhere in the
future!

Then finally in the Network Devices section, 

	CONFIG_ETHERTAP=m

You can include it directly in the kernel if you want, of course, no need
for modules.

Setting it all up
-----------------

First we need to create the /dev/tap0 device node:

	# mknod /dev/tap0 c 36 16
	# mknod /dev/tap1 c 36 17
	(etc)

Include the relevant modules (ethertap.o, netlink_dev.o, perhaps netlink.o),
and bring up your tap0 device:

	# ifconfig tap0 10.0.0.123 up

Now your device is up and running, you can ping it as well. This is what
confused me to no end, because nothing is connected to our ethertap as yet,
how is it that we can ping it?

It turns out that the ethertap is just like a regular network interface -
even when it's down you can ping it. We need to route stuff to it:

	# route add -host 10.0.0.124 gw 10.0.0.123

Now we can read /dev/tap0 and when we ping 10.0.0.124 from our
localhost, output should appear on the screen.

	# cat /dev/tap0
	:ßVU:9````````````````````````þýþET@?'


Getting this to work from other hosts
-------------------------------------

For this to work, you often need proxy ARP. 

	# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth0/proxy_arp 

eth0 here stands for the interface that connects to 'other hosts'.

Chances are that you are trying this on a non-routing desktop computer, so
you need to enable ip forwarding:

	# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward 

You should now be able to ping 10.0.0.124 from other hosts on your
10.0.0.0/8 subnet. If you are using public ip space, it should work from
everywhere.

ARP
---

If we were to take things very literally, your tcp/ip pseudo stack would
also have to implement ARP and MAC addresses. This is often a bit silly as
the ethertap device is a figment of our imagination anyway. However, should
you want to go 'all the way', you can add the 'arp' flag to ifconfig:

	# ifconfig tap0 10.0.0.123 up arp

This may also be useful when implementing a bridge, which needs to bridge
ARP packets as well.

The sample program below will no longer work then, because it does not
implement ARP. 

Sample program
--------------

A sample program is included somewhere in the bowels of the netfilter
source. I've extracted this program and list it here. It implements a very
tiny part of the IP stack and can respond to any pings it receives. It gets
confused if it receives ARP, as it tries to parse it by treating it as an IP
packet.

/* Simple program to listen to /dev/tap0 and reply to pings. */
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <netinet/ip.h>
#include <netinet/ip_icmp.h>
#if defined(__GLIBC__) && (__GLIBC__ == 2)
#include <netinet/tcp.h>
#include <netinet/udp.h>
#else
#include <linux/tcp.h>
#include <linux/udp.h>
#endif
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <unistd.h>

u_int16_t csum_partial(void *buffer, unsigned int len, u_int16_t prevsum)
{
	u_int32_t sum = 0;
	u_int16_t *ptr = buffer;

	while (len > 1)  {
		sum += *ptr++;
		len -= 2;
	}
	if (len) {
		union {
			u_int8_t byte;
			u_int16_t wyde;
		} odd;
		odd.wyde = 0;
		odd.byte = *((u_int8_t *)ptr);
		sum += odd.wyde;
	}
	sum = (sum >> 16) + (sum & 0xFFFF);
	sum += prevsum;
	return (sum + (sum >> 16));
}

int main()
{
	int fd, len;
	union {
		struct {
			char etherhdr[16];
			struct iphdr ip;
		} fmt;
		unsigned char raw[65536];
	} u;

	fd = open("/dev/tap0", O_RDWR);
	if (fd < 0) {
		perror("Opening `/dev/tap0'");
		return 1;
	}

	/* u.fmt.ip.ihl in host order!  Film at 11. */
	while ((len = read(fd, &u, sizeof(u))) > 0) {
		u_int32_t tmp;
 		struct icmphdr *icmp
			= (void *)((u_int32_t *)&u.fmt.ip + u.fmt.ip.ihl );
		struct tcphdr *tcp = (void *)icmp;
		struct udphdr *udp = (void *)icmp;
		
		fprintf(stderr, "SRC = %u.%u.%u.%u DST = %u.%u.%u.%u\n",
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.saddr) >> 24) & 0xFF,
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.saddr) >> 16) & 0xFF,
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.saddr) >> 8) & 0xFF,
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.saddr) >> 0) & 0xFF,
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.daddr) >> 24) & 0xFF,
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.daddr) >> 16) & 0xFF,
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.daddr) >> 8) & 0xFF,
			(ntohl(u.fmt.ip.daddr) >> 0) & 0xFF);

		switch (u.fmt.ip.protocol) {
		case IPPROTO_ICMP:
			if (icmp->type == ICMP_ECHO) {
				fprintf(stderr, "PONG! (iphdr = %u bytes)\n",
					(unsigned int)((char *)icmp
						       - (char *)&u.fmt.ip));

				/* Turn it around */
				tmp = u.fmt.ip.saddr;
				u.fmt.ip.saddr = u.fmt.ip.daddr;
				u.fmt.ip.daddr = tmp;

				icmp->type = ICMP_ECHOREPLY;
				icmp->checksum = 0;
				icmp->checksum
					= ~csum_partial(icmp,
							ntohs(u.fmt.ip.tot_len)
							- u.fmt.ip.ihl*4, 0);

				{
					unsigned int i;
					for (i = 44;
					     i < ntohs(u.fmt.ip.tot_len); i++){
						printf("%u:0x%02X ", i,
						       ((unsigned char *)
							&u.fmt.ip)[i]);
					}
					printf("\n");
				}
				write(fd, &u, len);
			}
			break;
		case IPPROTO_TCP:
			fprintf(stderr, "TCP: %u -> %u\n", ntohs(tcp->source),
				ntohs(tcp->dest));
			break;

		case IPPROTO_UDP:
			fprintf(stderr, "UDP: %u -> %u\n", ntohs(udp->source),
				ntohs(udp->dest));
			break;
		}
	}
	if (len < 0)
		perror("Reading from `/dev/tap0'");
	else fprintf(stderr, "Empty read from `/dev/tap0'");
	return len < 0 ? 1 : 0;
}