For a communication between two hosts, I need to send the IP address of my host to the other site. The problem is that if I request my IP address, it might be that I get back my local loopback IP addres (127.x.x.x) , not the network (ethernet) IP address.
I use the following code:
char myhostname[32];
gethostname(myhostname, 32);
hp = gethostbyname(myhostname);
unsigned my_ip = *(unsigned*)(hp->h_addr);
if( (my_ip % 256) == 127) {
/* Wrong IP adress as it's 127.x.x.x */
printf("Error, local IP address!");
return;
}
The only way to solve it is to make sure my hostname in /etc/hosts is behind the real network address, not the local loopback (the default for e.g. Ubuntu).
Is there a way to solve this without relying on the content of /etc/hosts?
Edit: I changed the above code so it makes use of getaddrinfo, but I still get back the loopback device's number (127.0,0,1) instead of the real IP address:
struct addrinfo hint = {0};
struct addrinfo *aip = NULL;
unsigned ip = 0;
struct sockaddr_in *sinp = NULL;
hint.ai_family = AF_INET; /* IPv4 */
hint.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM;
if(getaddrinfo(hostname, NULL, &hint, &aip) != 0) {
return 0;
}
sinp = (struct sockaddr_in *) aip->ai_addr;
ip = *(unsigned *) &sinp->sin_addr;
(I used to get back a list of 3 addrinfo's with the three SOCK_STREAM,SOCK_DGRAM and SOCK_RAW, but the hint prevents that)
So my question still stands...
There is POSIX function getaddrinfo() that returns linked list of addresses for given hostname, so you just need to go through that list and find non-loopback address.
See man getaddrinfo.
Not an answer, but a relevant comment: be aware that as soon as you start sending addressing information in the content of packets, you run the risk of making your application unable to work across NAT:ing routers and/or through firewalls.
These technologies rely on the information in IP packet headers to keep track of the traffic, and if applications exchange addressing information inside packets, where they remain invisible to this inspection, they might break.
Of course, this might be totally irrelevant to your application, but I thought it worth pointing out in this context.
The originating address will be included in the packet sent... there's no need to duplicate this information. It's obtained when accepting the communication from the remote host (see beej's guide to networking, specifically the part on accept())
I just ran into a situation where when only /etc/hosts has information in it and when I used getaddrinfo to get the IP address list, it returned 127.0.0.1 each time. As it turned out, the hostname was aliased to localhost...something often easy to overlook. Here's what happened:
The /etc/hosts file:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost foo
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6
172.16.1.248 foo
172.16.1.249 bie
172.16.1.250 bletch
So, now, when you call getaddrinfo with host="foo", it returns 127.0.0.1 3 times. The error here, is that foo appears both on the line with "127.0.0.1" and "172.16.1.248". Once I removed foo from the line with "127.0.0.1" things worked fine.
Hope this helps someone.
Look at this:
Discovering public IP programmatically
Note that in some cases a computer can have more than one non-loopback IP address, and in that case the answers to that question tell you how to get the one that is exposed to the internet.
Even if the computer has only one physical network interface (an assumption that may or may not hold, even netbooks have two - ethernet and WLAN), VPNs can add even more IP adresses. Anyway, the host on the other side should be able to determine the IP your host used to contact it.
Use getaddrinfo()
You're almost there. I'm not sure how you're getting my_ip from hp.
gethostbyname() returns a pointer to a hostent structure which has an h_addr_list field.
The h_addr_list field is a null-terminated list of all the ip addresses bound to that host.
I think you're getting the loopback address because it's the first entry in h_addr_list.
EDIT: It should work something like this:
gethostname(myhostname, 32);
hp = gethostbyname(myhostname);
unsigned my_ip = *(unsigned*)(hp->h_addr);
for (int i = 0; hp->h_addr_list[i] != 0; ++i) {
if (hp->h_addr_list[i] != INADDR_LOOPBACK) {
// hp->addr_list[i] is a non-loopback address
}
}
// no address found
If /etc/hosts is still there and still the same, looking for all entries of h_addr_list won't help.
Your new code hardwires the use of IPv4 (in the hint.ai_family field) which is a terrible idea.
Apart from that, you're close, you just should loop through the results of getaddrinfo. Your code just gets the first IP address but there is an aip->ai_next field to follow...
struct addrinfo {
...
struct addrinfo *ai_next; /* next structure in linked list */
};
Related
Per this question:
How to get local IP address of Windows system?
#Remy Lebeau answered that GetAdaptersAddresses() was a way to get the IP address of the local machine in Windows using C++.
I compiled the example and the example does not print out the local IP address of the machine. I took a look at the struct that the function returns (IP_ADAPTER_ADDRESSES_LH) and I was surprised to find that I did not see any references to where the actual IP address is.
My question is, where is the IP address located in the IP_ADAPTER_ADDRESSES_LH struct?
I compiled the example and the example does not print out the local IP address of the machine.
GetAdaptersAddresses() has always worked fine for me.
where is the IP address located in the IP_ADAPTER_ADDRESSES_LH struct?
There are potentially many IP addresses in the struct, depending on what kind of IP address you are interested in - Unicast, Anycast, Multicast, or DnsServer. For local assigned IPs, you would typically use the Unicast addresses only:
The IP_ADAPTER_ADDRESSES_LH::FirstUnicastAddress field points to a linked list of IP_ADAPTER_UNICAST_ADDRESS_LH structs, one entry for each IP address. Use the IP_ADAPTER_UNICAST_ADDRESS_LH::Next field to loop through the list (the MSDN example shows such a loop, but it only counts the number of elements in the list, it does not print out the content of the list).
The IP_ADAPTER_UNICAST_ADDRESS_LH::Address field contains the actual IP address, in SOCKET_ADDRESS format.
the SOCKET_ADDRESS::lpSockaddr field is a SOCKADDR* pointer. You can pass it as-is to socket APIs like bind().
If you want to do something with the IP address (like display it), you have to type-cast the SOCKET_ADDRESS::lpSockAddr pointer to either sockaddr_in* or sockaddr_in6*, depending on whether the IP address is IPv4 or IPv6, respectively (use the SOCKADDR::sa_family field to determine the correct type - AF_INET for sockaddr_in, AF_INET6 for sockaddr_in6). Then you can access the sockaddr_in::sin_addr or sockaddr_in6::sin6_addr field as needed, which contain the actual bytes of the IP address.
For example:
PIP_ADAPTER_ADDRESSES pAddresses = ...; // allocate buffer as needed...
ULONG ulSize = ...; // size of allocated buffer...
if (GetAdaptersAddresses(AF_UNSPEC, GAA_FLAG_SKIP_ANYCAST | GAA_FLAG_SKIP_MULTICAST | GAA_FLAG_SKIP_DNS_SERVER | GAA_FLAG_SKIP_FRIENDLY_NAME, NULL, pAddresses, &ulSize) == 0)
{
for (PIP_ADAPTER_UNICAST_ADDRESS_LH *pAddress = pAddresses->FirstUnicastAddress;
pAddress != NULL;
pAddress = pAddress->Next)
{
SOCKADDR *pSockAddr = pAddress->Address.lpSockaddr;
switch (pSockAddr->sa_family)
{
case AF_INET: {
sockaddr_in *pInAddr = (sockaddr_in*) pSockAddr;
// use pInAddr->sin_addr as needed...
break;
}
case AF_INET6: {
sockaddr_in6 *pIn6Addr = (sockaddr_in6*) pSockAddr;
// use pIn6Addr->sin6_addr as needed...
break;
}
}
}
}
// free pAddresses as needed ...
For a project, I need to know whether the network connection is from the local computer or from a remote computer.
How to achieve this?
This can be achieved by utilizing the getpeername and the getsockname functions.
This snipped does exactly what I need it to:
bool checkForLocalConnection(SOCKET Sock) {
sockaddr_in RemAddr, LocAddr;
int Len = sizeof(RemAddr);
getpeername(Sock, (sockaddr *)&RemAddr, &Len);
getsockname(Sock, (sockaddr *)&LocAddr, &Len);
return (RemAddr.sin_addr.S_un.S_addr == LocAddr.sin_addr.S_un.S_addr);
}
The endianess of the result is always the same, which is why you don't even have to convert it to native endianess.
Why this works and why it's necessary:
If you connect to localhost or 127.0.0.1, getpeername will always yield the address 127.0.0.1 (converted to an unsigned long, obviously).
That means, you could just check for htonl(2130706433); and be done with it (Minding the endianess). However if you enter the actual address...or any of your other local addresses your NIC might have, getpeername will return that address, instead of 127.0.0.1.
getsockname will return the local interface this socket is connected on, which means it will choose the correct interface and tell you its address, which is equal only if you're connected from a local machine.
I hope this will help someone, since I had to search forever to find that little info.
It should work for most common cases. (There are some exceptions)
List of exceptions:
Multi-Address network cards. These are on the same machine but either not on the same NIC or bound to a different IP. There isn't that much you can do about that.
Calling localhost on a different IP than 127.0.0.1. getsockname will always return 127.0.0.1, regardless of which 127.x.x.x you're calling. As a 'guard' against that, you can check specifically for the 127 in the first octet of the peer address.
Many thanks for the help with this goes to harper.
I have a rather strange question. Lately, I have been tasked with developing software to simulate a large (hundreds of nodes and up) network. To make a long story short, we have a head-end server that communicates with each host through a predictable IP addressing scheme via Linux sockets using a mixture of broadcast and unicast. The head-end will issue a request to a given client and will (sometimes) receive data pertaining to the command executed. All data / commands are sent via UDP on a well-defined port.
Now, for testing purposes, we would like to use the original server binary in a virtual environment an still receive reasonable data. For example, we would like to issue a reset command to a particular node and receive a fake notification back. The broadcast bit is easy, as I simply have to listen in on the proper broadcast address and act accordingly. The unicast is what has me stuck.
The Question
Is it possible to receive UDP requests for a large number of discrete hosts via a single (or a reduced) number of Linux sockets? All hosts are on the same subnet and all IP addresses / hosts / network topology are known ahead of time.
Desired Output
Ultimately, we would like to have an app that runs on a host on the network and responds as if it were each of these discrete 'virtualized' hosts based on input datagrams.
Do note that I am not asking for someone to write me a program. I am just simply looking for some direction as to the 'vehicle' by which this can be accomplished.
Possible Solutions
RAW Sockets: This has promise as I can trap all inbound data via a
single socket and punt it off to a worker thread for processing and
response. Unfortunately, I only receive packets that are
destined for my host IP and none of the 'fake' IPs.
Abuse IP aliases on Linux, one for each host: This seems to be the most direct approach but it feels like duck hunting with a bazooka. It has the added benefit of appearing to 'be' the host for any other forms of communication, I just worry that creating 400+ aliases might be a bit much for our bastard-child of a Linux environment. As an added complication, the hosts do change based on configuration and can be in any manner of states (up, down, command processing, etc.).
The source code of the server is to be treated as immutable for the purpose of our testing. I fully expect this will be impossible with the constraints given, but someone may have an idea of how to accomplish this as, quite frankly, I have never done anything of this sort before.
Thank you in advance for any assistance.
Personally, I would use your second option - add all the IP addresses to the host, then bind to INADDR_ANY address. This would mean you could use just one socket.
An alternative is to set the IP_TRANSPARENT socket option on your socket, which will then allow your application to bind to non-local addresses (you would route the networks containing those addresses through the machine that your application is running on). This method does require one socket per address, though.
So, using a combination of both of caf's solutions, I was able to have my cake and eat it too. I was also heavily influenced by
Python/iptables: Capturing all UDP packets and their original destination
which is a Python example, but does show how I can 'cheat' the packets back to a single interface, negating the need for maintenance of many sockets. That question is well worth the read and contains a lot of good information. For compactness, though, I will restate part of it below.
Hopefully it can help someone else down the road.
Part 1 - Host Configuration
As stated in the above question, we can use a combination of iptables and ip routes to redirect the packets to loopback for processing. This was not stated in my original question, but it is acceptable for the 'simulator' to run on the head-end host itself and not be a discrete node on the network. To do this, we mark each packet via iptables and then route it to lo based on said mark.
iptables -A OUTPUT -t mangle -p udp --dport 27333 -j MARK --set-mark 1
ip rule add fwmark 1 lookup 100
ip route add local 0.0.0.0/0 dev lo table 100
In my case, I only need traffic to a certain port so my iptables rule has been adjusted accordingly from the original.
Part 2 - Software
As caf stated in his post, the real trick is to use IP_TRANSPARENT and a raw socket. Raw sockets are necessary in order to get the original source / destination IP addresses. One gotchya that took me a while was the use of IPPROTO_UDP in the call to socket(). Even though this is a raw socket, it will strip out the Ethernet header. A lot of code online shows the calculation of the IP header offset using something similar to the following:
struct iphdr* ipHeader = (struct iphdr *)(buf + sizeof(ethhdr));
Offsetting by ethhdr (which is stripped) will give you some rather entertaining garbage data. With that particular header removed, the necessary IP header is simply the first structure in the buffer.
The Test Code
Below you will find a proof-of-concept example. It is no way fully functional or complete. In particular, no checking in done on the incoming packets for malicious data (ex. format string exploits in the payload, pointer math problems, malformed / malicious packets, etc).
Note that the code binds to lo specifically. This does not mean that we will only get packets destined for one of our 'fake' hosts (other services use loobpack, too). Additional checking / filtering is required to get only the packets we want.
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <netinet/if_ether.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <netinet/ip.h>
#include <netinet/udp.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string>
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
//Set up listening socket
struct sockaddr_in serverAddr;
struct iphdr* ipHeader;
struct udphdr* udpHeader;
int listenSock = 0;
char data[65536];
static int is_transparent = 1;
std::string device = "lo";
//Initialize listening socket
if ((listenSock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_UDP)) < 0) {
printf("Error creating socket\n");
return 1;
}
setsockopt(listenSock, SOL_IP, IP_TRANSPARENT, &is_transparent, sizeof(is_transparent));
setsockopt(listensock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_BINDTO_DEVICE, device.c_str(), device.size());
memset(&serverAddr, 0x00, sizeof(serverAddr));
memset(&data, 0x00, sizeof(data));
//Setup server address
serverAddr.sin_family = AF_INET;
serverAddr.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
serverAddr.sin_port = htons(27333);
//Bind and listen
if (bind(listenSock, (struct sockaddr *) &serverAddr, sizeof(serverAddr)) < 0) {
printf("Error binding socket\n");
return 1;
}
while (1) {
//Accept connection
recv(listenSock, data, 65536, 0);
//Get IP header
ipHeader = (struct iphdr*)(data);
//Only grab UDP packets (17 is the magic number for UDP protocol)
if ((unsigned int)ipHeader->protocol == 17) {
//Get UDP header information
udpHeader = (struct udphdr*)(data + (ipHeader->ihl * 4));
//DEBUG
struct sockaddr_in tempDest;
struct sockaddr_in tempSource;
char* payload = (char*)(data + ipHeader->ihl * 4) + sizeof(struct udphdr));
memset(&tempSource, 0x00, sizeof(tempSource));
memset(&tempDest, 0x00, sizeof(tempDest));
tempSource.sin_addr.s_addr = ipHeader->saddr;
tempDest.sin_addr.s_addr = ipHeader->daddr;
printf("Datagram received\n");
printf("Source IP: %s\n", inet_ntoa(tempSource.sin_addr));
printf("Dest IP : %s\n", inet_ntoa(tempDest.sin_addr));
printf("Data : %s\n", payload);
printf("Port : %d\n\n", ntohs(udpHeader->dest));
}
}
}
Further Reading
Some very helpful links are below.
http://www.binarytides.com/packet-sniffer-code-in-c-using-linux-sockets-bsd-part-2/
http://bert-hubert.blogspot.com/2012/10/on-binding-datagram-udp-sockets-to-any.html
I am using BSD sockets over a wlan. I have noticed that my server computer's ip address changes occasionally when I connect to it. The problem is that I enter the ip address into my code as a literal string. So whenever it changes I have to go into the code and change it there. How can I change the code so that it will use whatever the ip is at the time? This is the call in the server code
if ((status = getaddrinfo("192.168.2.2", port, &hints, &servinfo)) != 0)
and the client side is the same. I tried NULL for the address on both sides, but the client will not connect and just gives me a "Connection refused" error.
Thanks for any help.
Use a domain name that can be looked up in your hosts file or in DNS, rather than an IP address.
How about a command line parameter?
int main( inr argc, char* argv[] ) {
const char* addr = "myfancyhost.domain.com"; /* default address */
if ( argc > 1 ) {
addr = argv[1]; /* explicit address */
}
if ((status = getaddrinfo(addr, ...
Give your server a name, and use gethostbyname to find its address (and, generally, put the server name into a configuration file instead of hard-coding it, though hard-coding a default if you can't find the config file doesn't hurt).
I am working on implementing UpNP on C++, and I need to get the local internal IP address assigned by the router to make the sockets works. The address I need is the one that appears on routers where it shows the computers connected to the router and the local IP assigned to each computer. I am using this:
PHOSTENT Addr = NULL;
char Host[MAX_PATH];
if( gethostname(Host, sizeof(Host)) == 0 )
{
Address = gethostbyname( Host );
if( Address != NULL )
{
//*(struct in_addr *)Address->h_addr_list[0]) <- this is my address
}
}
This works fine on the computer I am testing, but that computer has only one network card, so I was wondering if maybe when a computer has more than one card or network device, Address->h_addr_list[0] may not be the one I need and it could be in another index of that array.
Will [0] always retrieve the IP assigned by the router?
(Assuming winsock here, as per previous question)
You shouldn't assume that the first address is the correct one (as there may be multiple interfaces, and more than one may be active)
I'd recommend enumerating addresses using either getaddrinfo with an empty pNodeName argument, or GetAdaptersAddresses.
Both of these return a linked lists with your system's registered addresses
... get the local internal IP address assigned by the router ...
Note that in some cases, the machine's IP address will be manually assigned, but the user will still want to use UPnP.
On Linux, it is suggested to use getaddrinfo(3) instead of gethostbyname(3), perhaps Winsocks has made a similar transition?
On Linux, it is common for /etc/hosts to have loopback entries also accessible by hostname; /etc/gai.conf can be used to configure the sort order of returned addresses, and possibly a loopback address will be returned. Does Winsock make it that easy for sysadmins to change the order of returned addresses?
Don't forget that a system may legitimately have multiple upstream routers: a laptop with an EV-DO or EDGE or similar cellular data connection and a wireless or wired Ethernet will have multiple IPs, multiple upstream routers, and the routing table will be consulted to figure out which one should be used to send each packet.
Can you use either (a) the address used by clients to contact you? (getsockname(2) will return the local address used on a specific socket.) (b) ask the user to select among the list of IP addresses, if there are several? Binding to N of M interfaces would be nice, so users can select which networks get the services and which networks are left alone.