I am trying to write a linux kernel module that communicates with user process using netlink. I am using netlink because the user program I want to communicate to communicates only using sockets and I cant change that to add ioctl() or anything.
Problem is that I cant figure out how to do that. I have googled but all examples I found are for old like this one and no longer valid for current kernel versions. I have also looked at this SO question but the sample here uses libnl for socket operations but I want to stick to standard socket functions (defined by sys/socket.h). So can some one plz guide me here to some tutorial or guide or some thing that can help me understand the interface and usage of netlink. I would highly appreciate a working example, nothing fancy, just a very basic example of how to establish a connection from a socket in user program to a socket in kernel and then send data from user process to kernel and receive back from kernel.
Also please do not tell me to look at kernel code. I am already doing it but it will take a lot of time and I dont have lot of it left.
Update: After lot of trial and error I have following code which sends message from user program to kernel but the message from kernel to user program i.e using netlink_unicast() is not working. Its not only not working, the call hangs the systems and then I have to restart the machine. Can same one plz take a look and tell me what wrong I am doing. The netlink_unicast() call is commented in the following code. It should be uncommented for kernel to user program message.
User Program
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <linux/netlink.h>
#define NETLINK_USER 31
#define MAX_PAYLOAD 1024 /* maximum payload size*/struct sockaddr_nl src_addr, dest_addr;
struct nlmsghdr *nlh = NULL;
struct iovec iov;
int sock_fd;
struct msghdr msg;void main()
{sock_fd=socket(PF_NETLINK, SOCK_RAW, NETLINK_USER); if(sock_fd<0) return -1; memset(&src_addr, 0, sizeof(src_addr)); src_addr.nl_family = AF_NETLINK; src_addr.nl_pid = getpid(); /* self pid */ /* interested in group 1<<0 */ bind(sock_fd, (struct sockaddr*)&src_addr, sizeof(src_addr)); memset(&dest_addr, 0, sizeof(dest_addr)); memset(&dest_addr, 0, sizeof(dest_addr)); dest_addr.nl_family = AF_NETLINK; dest_addr.nl_pid = 0; /* For Linux Kernel */ dest_addr.nl_groups = 0; /* unicast */ nlh = (struct nlmsghdr *)malloc( NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD)); memset(nlh, 0, NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD)); nlh->nlmsg_len = NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD); nlh->nlmsg_pid = getpid(); nlh->nlmsg_flags = 0; strcpy(NLMSG_DATA(nlh), "Hello"); iov.iov_base = (void *)nlh; iov.iov_len = nlh->nlmsg_len; msg.msg_name = (void *)&dest_addr; msg.msg_namelen = sizeof(dest_addr); msg.msg_iov = &iov; msg.msg_iovlen = 1; printf("Sending message to kernel\n"); sendmsg(sock_fd,&msg,0); printf("Waiting for message from kernel\n"); /* Read message from kernel */ recvmsg(sock_fd, &msg, 0); printf(" Received message payload: %s\n", NLMSG_DATA(nlh)); close(sock_fd);
}
Kernel Code
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>
#include <linux/init.h>
#include <net/sock.h>
#include <linux/socket.h>
#include <linux/net.h>
#include <asm/types.h>
#include <linux/netlink.h>
#include <linux/skbuff.h>#define NETLINK_USER 31
struct sock *nl_sk = NULL;
static void hello_nl_recv_msg(struct sk_buff *skb)
{struct nlmsghdr *nlh; int pid; printk(KERN_INFO "Entering: %s\n", __FUNCTION__); nlh=(struct nlmsghdr*)skb->data; printk(KERN_INFO "Netlink received msg payload: %s\n", (char*)NLMSG_DATA(nlh)); pid = nlh->nlmsg_pid; /*pid of sending process */ NETLINK_CB(skb).dst_group = 0; /* not in mcast group */ NETLINK_CB(skb).pid = 0; /* from kernel */ //NETLINK_CB(skb).groups = 0; /* not in mcast group */ //NETLINK_CB(skb).dst_pid = pid; printk("About to send msg bak:\n"); //netlink_unicast(nl_sk,skb,pid,MSG_DONTWAIT);
}
static int __init hello_init(void)
{printk("Entering: %s\n",__FUNCTION__); nl_sk=netlink_kernel_create(&init_net, NETLINK_USER, 0, hello_nl_recv_msg, NULL, THIS_MODULE); if(!nl_sk) { printk(KERN_ALERT "Error creating socket.\n"); return -10; } return 0;
}
static void __exit hello_exit(void)
{printk(KERN_INFO "exiting hello module\n"); netlink_kernel_release(nl_sk);
}
module_init(hello_init);
module_exit(hello_exit);