netlink API changes

Netlink socket is a flexible interface for communication between user-space applications and kernel modules. It provides an easy-to-use socket API to both applications and the kernel. It provides advanced communication features, such as full-duplex, buffered I/O, multicast and asynchronous communication, which are absent in other kernel/user-space IPCs. But the netlink interface in Linux is fast changing,the APIs vary a lot between different kernel versions.Here is the changed interfaces in Linux kernel 2.6.37

netlink_kernel_create

This method is called to create a netlink socket in kernel modules.In ealier version of the kernel this functions is defined as this:

struct sock *

netlink_kernel_create(int unit,

           void (*input)(struct sock *sk, int len));

The parameter unit is, in fact, the netlink protocol type, such as NETLINK_TEST. The function pointer, input, is a callback function invoked 

when a message arrives at this netlink socket. while in 2.6.37 the function is defined as below in /linux/netlink.h

extern struct sock *netlink_kernel_create(struct net *net,

int unit,unsigned int groups,

void (*input)(struct sk_buff *skb),

struct mutex *cb_mutex,

struct module *module);

There are some newly-added parameters:

 

struct net *net:the namespace of network.using &init_net is ok.

unsigned int groups:the group number of the socket.pass NULL to this parameter

struct mutex *cb_mutex:NULL is OK

struct module *module:use the THIS_MODULE macro

 

notice that the prototype of the callback func input has also been changed.

sk_buff in handler function

All network-related queues and buffers in the kernel use a common data structure, struct sk_buff. This is a large struct containing all the control information required for the packet (datagram, cell, whatever). The sk_buff elements are organized as a doubly linked list, in such a way that it is very efficient to move an sk_buff element from the beginning/end of a list to the beginning/end of another list. A queue is defined by struct sk_buff_head, which includes a head and a tail pointer to sk_buff elements. 

All the queuing structures include an sk_buff_head representing the queue. For instance, struct sock includes a receive and send queue. Functions to manage the queues (skb_queue_head(), skb_queue_tail(), skb_dequeue(), skb_dequeue_tail()) operate on an sk_buff_head. In reality, however, the sk_buff_head is included in the doubly linked list of sk_buffs (so it actually forms a ring). 

When a sk_buff is allocated, also its data space is allocated from kernel memory. sk_buff allocation is done with alloc_skb() or dev_alloc_skb(); drivers use dev_alloc_skb();. (free by kfree_skb() and dev_kfree_skb(). 

However, sk_buff provides an additional management layer. The data space is divided into a head area and a data area. This allows kernel functions to reserve space for the header, so that the data doesn't need to be copied around. Typically, therefore, after allocating an sk_buff, header space is reserved using skb_reserve(). skb_pull(int len) – removes data from the start of a buffer (skipping over an existing header) by advancing data to data+len and by decreasing len. 

Sample Code

Below is the sample code I wrote. The user send a greeting message to kernel module and the kernel module print the message,then send a greeting message back to the user app.(Linux kernel version 2.6.37,os openSUSE 11.4)

kernel module：

/×××××Kernel module××/#include <linux/init.h>#include <linux/module.h>#include <linux/kernel.h>#include <linux/netlink.h>#include <linux/string.h>#include <net/sock.h>#define NETLINK_TEST 28#define MAX_PAYLOAD 1024struct sock *nl_sock = NULL;struct sockaddr_nl src_addr,dest_addr;struct iovec iov;int pid;struct msghdr msg;void nlsendmsg(const char *message){ struct nlmsghdr *nlh; struct sk_buff *nl_skb; nl_skb = alloc_skb(NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD),GFP_ATOMIC); if(nl_skb==NULL) { printk(KERN_INFO "alloc skb failed/n"); return; } nlh = nlmsg_put(nl_skb, 0, 0, 0, NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD) - sizeof(struct nlmsghdr), 0); NETLINK_CB(nl_skb).pid = 0; strcpy(NLMSG_DATA(nlh),message); netlink_unicast(nl_sock, nl_skb, pid, MSG_DONTWAIT);}void nl_data_ready(struct sk_buff *skb){ struct nlmsghdr *nlh; int len; //int err; char msgbuf[100]; nlh = nlmsg_hdr(skb); len = skb->len; if(NLMSG_OK(nlh,len)){ memcpy(msgbuf,NLMSG_DATA(nlh),sizeof(msg)); printk(KERN_INFO "%s",msgbuf); pid = nlh->nlmsg_pid; nlsendmsg("Greeting from kernel/n"); }}static int __init netlink_init(void){ printk(KERN_INFO "enter test/n"); nl_sock = netlink_kernel_create(&init_net,NETLINK_TEST, 0, nl_data_ready, NULL, THIS_MODULE); if(!nl_sock) return -ENOMEM; return 0;}static void __exit netlink_exit(void){ printk(KERN_INFO "exit test/n"); if(NULL!=nl_sock){ sock_release(nl_sock->sk_socket); }}module_init(netlink_init);module_exit(netlink_exit); 

User App：

‍‍‍#include <sys/types.h>#include <sys/socket.h>#include <linux/netlink.h>#include <stdlib.h>#include <string.h>#include <stdio.h>#define NETLINK_TEST 28#define MAX_PAYLOAD 1024struct sockaddr_nl nl_src_addr,nl_dest_addr;struct nlmsghdr *nlh = NULL;struct iovec iov;int nl_fd;struct msghdr nl_msg;char recvbuf[1024];void sendnlmsg(const char *message){ memset(nlh, 0, NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD)); nlh ->nlmsg_len = NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD); nlh->nlmsg_pid = getpid(); nlh->nlmsg_flags = 0; strcpy((char *)NLMSG_DATA(nlh),message); iov.iov_base = (void *)nlh; iov.iov_len = nlh->nlmsg_len; nl_msg.msg_name = (void *)&nl_dest_addr; nl_msg.msg_namelen = sizeof(nl_dest_addr); nl_msg.msg_iov = &iov; nl_msg.msg_iovlen=1; sendmsg(nl_fd,&nl_msg,0);}void recvnlmsg(char *message){ memset(nlh, 0, NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD)); recvmsg(nl_fd,&nl_msg,0); strcpy(message,NLMSG_DATA(nlh));}void init_nl(){ nl_fd = socket(AF_NETLINK,SOCK_RAW,NETLINK_TEST); memset(&nl_msg,0,sizeof(nl_msg)); memset(&nl_src_addr,0,sizeof(nl_src_addr)); nl_src_addr.nl_family = AF_NETLINK; nl_src_addr.nl_pid = getpid(); nl_src_addr.nl_groups = 0; bind(nl_fd,(struct sockaddr*)&nl_src_addr, sizeof(nl_src_addr)); memset(&nl_dest_addr,0,sizeof(nl_src_addr)); nl_dest_addr.nl_family = AF_NETLINK; nl_dest_addr.nl_pid = 0; nl_dest_addr.nl_groups = 0; nlh = (struct nlmsghdr *)malloc(NLMSG_SPACE(MAX_PAYLOAD)); sendnlmsg("Greeting from User!/n"); recvnlmsg(recvbuf); printf("%s",recvbuf);}int main(){ init_nl(); return 0;}