Setting the source IP for a UDP socket

Question

I have a UDP socket that is bound to INADDR_ANY to listen to packets on all the IPs my server has. I\'m sending out replies through the same socket.

Right now the se

Answer 1

I thought I'd expand Jeremy's on how to do this for IPv6. Jeremy leaves out a lot of detail, and some documentation (like Linux's man page for ipv6) is just plain wrong. First on some distributions you have to define _GNU_SOURCE, otherwise some of the IPv6 stuff isn't defined:

#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include 
#include 
#include 

Next set up the socket in a fairly standard way that listens for all IP packets (ie, both IPv4 and IPv6) on a particular UDP port:

const int on=1, off=0;
int result;
struct sockaddr_in6 sin6;
int soc;

soc = socket(AF_INET6, SOCK_DGRAM, 0);
setsockopt(soc, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, &on, sizeof(on));
setsockopt(soc, IPPROTO_IP, IP_PKTINFO, &on, sizeof(on));
setsockopt(soc, IPPROTO_IPV6, IPV6_RECVPKTINFO, &on, sizeof(on));
setsockopt(soc, IPPROTO_IPV6, IPV6_V6ONLY, &off, sizeof(off));
memset(&sin6, '\0', sizeof(sin6));
sin6.sin6_family = htons(AF_INET6);
sin6.sin6_port = htons(MY_UDP_PORT);
result = bind(soc, (struct sockaddr*)&sin6, sizeof(sin6));

Notice the code above sets both IP and IPv6 options for an IPv6 socket. Turns out if the packet arrives on an IPv4 address, you will get IP_PKTINFO (ie IPv4) cmsg's even though it is an IPv6 socket, and if you don't enable them they won't be sent. Also notice the IPV6_RECPKTINFO option is set (which isn't mentioned in man 7 ipv6), not IPV6_PKTINFO (which is described wrongly in man 7 ipv6). Now receive a udp packet:

int bytes_received;
struct sockaddr_in6 from;
struct iovec iovec[1];
struct msghdr msg;
char msg_control[1024];
char udp_packet[1500];

iovec[0].iov_base = udp_packet;
iovec[0].iov_len = sizeof(udp_packet);
msg.msg_name = &from;
msg.msg_namelen = sizeof(from);
msg.msg_iov = iovec;
msg.msg_iovlen = sizeof(iovec) / sizeof(*iovec);
msg.msg_control = msg_control;
msg.msg_controllen = sizeof(msg_control);
msg.msg_flags = 0;
bytes_received = recvmsg(soc, &msg, 0);

The next step is to extract the interface and address the UDP packet was received on out of the cmsg:

struct in_pktinfo in_pktinfo;
struct in6_pktinfo in6_pktinfo;
int have_in_pktinfo = 0;
int have_in6_pktinfo = 0;
struct cmsghdr* cmsg;

for (cmsg = CMSG_FIRSTHDR(&msg); cmsg != 0; cmsg = CMSG_NXTHDR(&msg, cmsg))
{
  if (cmsg->cmsg_level == IPPROTO_IP && cmsg->cmsg_type == IP_PKTINFO)
  {
    in_pktinfo = *(struct in_pktinfo*)CMSG_DATA(cmsg);
    have_in_pktinfo = 1;
  }
  if (cmsg->cmsg_level == IPPROTO_IPV6 && cmsg->cmsg_type == IPV6_PKTINFO)
  {
    in6_pktinfo = *(struct in6_pktinfo*)CMSG_DATA(cmsg);
    have_in6_pktinfo = 1;
  }
}

Finally we get to send the response back, using the same destination.

int cmsg_space;

iovec[0].iov_base = udp_response;
iovec[0].iov_len = udp_response_length;
msg.msg_name = &from;
msg.msg_namelen = sizeof(from);
msg.msg_iov = iovec;
msg.msg_iovlen = sizeof(iovec) / sizeof(*iovec);
msg.msg_control = msg_control;
msg.msg_controllen = sizeof(msg_control);
msg.msg_flags = 0;
cmsg_space = 0;
cmsg = CMSG_FIRSTHDR(&msg);
if (have_in6_pktinfo)
{
  cmsg->cmsg_level = IPPROTO_IPV6;
  cmsg->cmsg_type = IPV6_PKTINFO;
  cmsg->cmsg_len = CMSG_LEN(sizeof(in6_pktinfo));
  *(struct in6_pktinfo*)CMSG_DATA(cmsg) = in6_pktinfo;
  cmsg_space += CMSG_SPACE(sizeof(in6_pktinfo));
}
if (have_in_pktinfo)
{
  cmsg->cmsg_level = IPPROTO_IP;
  cmsg->cmsg_type = IP_PKTINFO;
  cmsg->cmsg_len = CMSG_LEN(sizeof(in_pktinfo));
  *(struct in_pktinfo*)CMSG_DATA(cmsg) = in_pktinfo;
  cmsg_space += CMSG_SPACE(sizeof(in_pktinfo));
}
msg.msg_controllen = cmsg_space;
ret = sendmsg(soc, &msg, 0);

Again notice how, if the packet came in via IPv4 we have to put an IPv4 option into the cmsg's even though it is an AF_INET6 socket. At least, that is what you have to do for Linux.

It is a surprising amount of work, but AFAICT it is the minimum you have to do to make a robust UDP server that works in all conceivable Linux environments. Most of it is not required for TCP because it handles multihoming transparently.