Linux:How to Set Default Route from C

Linux : how to set default route from C?

You could strace the route command you are wanting to mimic. This gives you the relevant syscalls useful to change routing.

You may be interested by the proc(5) interface, e.g. its /proc/net/route pseudo-file.

See also ip(7).

Default Gateway in C on Linux

You will probably need to use a NETLINK_ROUTE socket, part of the PF_NETLINK family of sockets. Check out the source code of the 'ip' program part of 'iproute'. Specifically, its 'route' subcommand.

Getting gateway to use for a given ip in ANSI C

This is OS specific, there's no unified(or ANSI C) API for this.

Assuming Linux, the best way is to just parse /proc/net/route , look for the entry where Destination is 00000000 , the default gateway is in the Gateway column , where you can read the hex representation of the gateway IP address (in big endian , I believe)

If you want to do this via more specific API calls, you'll have to go through quite some hoops, here's an example program:

#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <net/if.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>
#include <linux/netlink.h>
#include <linux/rtnetlink.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>


#define BUFSIZE 8192
char gateway[255];

struct route_info {
    struct in_addr dstAddr;
    struct in_addr srcAddr;
    struct in_addr gateWay;
    char ifName[IF_NAMESIZE];
};

int readNlSock(int sockFd, char *bufPtr, int seqNum, int pId)
{
    struct nlmsghdr *nlHdr;
    int readLen = 0, msgLen = 0;

 do {
    /* Recieve response from the kernel */
        if ((readLen = recv(sockFd, bufPtr, BUFSIZE - msgLen, 0)) < 0) {
            perror("SOCK READ: ");
            return -1;
        }

        nlHdr = (struct nlmsghdr *) bufPtr;

    /* Check if the header is valid */
        if ((NLMSG_OK(nlHdr, readLen) == 0)
            || (nlHdr->nlmsg_type == NLMSG_ERROR)) {
            perror("Error in recieved packet");
            return -1;
        }

    /* Check if the its the last message */
        if (nlHdr->nlmsg_type == NLMSG_DONE) {
            break;
        } else {
    /* Else move the pointer to buffer appropriately */
            bufPtr += readLen;
            msgLen += readLen;
        }

    /* Check if its a multi part message */
        if ((nlHdr->nlmsg_flags & NLM_F_MULTI) == 0) {
           /* return if its not */
            break;
        }
    } while ((nlHdr->nlmsg_seq != seqNum) || (nlHdr->nlmsg_pid != pId));
    return msgLen;
}
/* For printing the routes. */
void printRoute(struct route_info *rtInfo)
{
    char tempBuf[512];

/* Print Destination address */
    if (rtInfo->dstAddr.s_addr != 0)
        strcpy(tempBuf,  inet_ntoa(rtInfo->dstAddr));
    else
        sprintf(tempBuf, "*.*.*.*\t");
    fprintf(stdout, "%s\t", tempBuf);

/* Print Gateway address */
    if (rtInfo->gateWay.s_addr != 0)
        strcpy(tempBuf, (char *) inet_ntoa(rtInfo->gateWay));
    else
        sprintf(tempBuf, "*.*.*.*\t");
    fprintf(stdout, "%s\t", tempBuf);

    /* Print Interface Name*/
    fprintf(stdout, "%s\t", rtInfo->ifName);

    /* Print Source address */
    if (rtInfo->srcAddr.s_addr != 0)
        strcpy(tempBuf, inet_ntoa(rtInfo->srcAddr));
    else
        sprintf(tempBuf, "*.*.*.*\t");
    fprintf(stdout, "%s\n", tempBuf);
}

void printGateway()
{
    printf("%s\n", gateway);
}
/* For parsing the route info returned */
void parseRoutes(struct nlmsghdr *nlHdr, struct route_info *rtInfo)
{
    struct rtmsg *rtMsg;
    struct rtattr *rtAttr;
    int rtLen;

    rtMsg = (struct rtmsg *) NLMSG_DATA(nlHdr);

/* If the route is not for AF_INET or does not belong to main routing table
then return. */
    if ((rtMsg->rtm_family != AF_INET) || (rtMsg->rtm_table != RT_TABLE_MAIN))
        return;

/* get the rtattr field */
    rtAttr = (struct rtattr *) RTM_RTA(rtMsg);
    rtLen = RTM_PAYLOAD(nlHdr);
    for (; RTA_OK(rtAttr, rtLen); rtAttr = RTA_NEXT(rtAttr, rtLen)) {
        switch (rtAttr->rta_type) {
        case RTA_OIF:
            if_indextoname(*(int *) RTA_DATA(rtAttr), rtInfo->ifName);
            break;
        case RTA_GATEWAY:
            rtInfo->gateWay.s_addr= *(u_int *) RTA_DATA(rtAttr);
            break;
        case RTA_PREFSRC:
            rtInfo->srcAddr.s_addr= *(u_int *) RTA_DATA(rtAttr);
            break;
        case RTA_DST:
            rtInfo->dstAddr .s_addr= *(u_int *) RTA_DATA(rtAttr);
            break;
        }
    }
    //printf("%s\n", inet_ntoa(rtInfo->dstAddr));

    if (rtInfo->dstAddr.s_addr == 0)
        sprintf(gateway, (char *) inet_ntoa(rtInfo->gateWay));
    //printRoute(rtInfo);

    return;
}


int main()
{
    struct nlmsghdr *nlMsg;
    struct rtmsg *rtMsg;
    struct route_info *rtInfo;
    char msgBuf[BUFSIZE];

    int sock, len, msgSeq = 0;

/* Create Socket */
    if ((sock = socket(PF_NETLINK, SOCK_DGRAM, NETLINK_ROUTE)) < 0)
        perror("Socket Creation: ");

    memset(msgBuf, 0, BUFSIZE);

/* point the header and the msg structure pointers into the buffer */
    nlMsg = (struct nlmsghdr *) msgBuf;
    rtMsg = (struct rtmsg *) NLMSG_DATA(nlMsg);

/* Fill in the nlmsg header*/
    nlMsg->nlmsg_len = NLMSG_LENGTH(sizeof(struct rtmsg));  // Length of message.
    nlMsg->nlmsg_type = RTM_GETROUTE;   // Get the routes from kernel routing table .

    nlMsg->nlmsg_flags = NLM_F_DUMP | NLM_F_REQUEST;    // The message is a request for dump.
    nlMsg->nlmsg_seq = msgSeq++;    // Sequence of the message packet.
    nlMsg->nlmsg_pid = getpid();    // PID of process sending the request.

/* Send the request */
    if (send(sock, nlMsg, nlMsg->nlmsg_len, 0) < 0) {
        printf("Write To Socket Failed...\n");
        return -1;
    }

/* Read the response */
    if ((len = readNlSock(sock, msgBuf, msgSeq, getpid())) < 0) {
        printf("Read From Socket Failed...\n");
    return -1;
    }
/* Parse and print the response */
    rtInfo = (struct route_info *) malloc(sizeof(struct route_info));
//fprintf(stdout, "Destination\tGateway\tInterface\tSource\n");
    for (; NLMSG_OK(nlMsg, len); nlMsg = NLMSG_NEXT(nlMsg, len)) {
        memset(rtInfo, 0, sizeof(struct route_info));
        parseRoutes(nlMsg, rtInfo);
    }
    free(rtInfo);
    close(sock);

    printGateway();
    return 0;
}

Linux : I programatically changed my default route to eth0 but now I can't ping, any suggestions?

your default gateway ip address is not defined.

type route add default gw <gateway ip> as root (or sudo)

NOTE: using dhcp to assign ip settings would be best way I think to solve your problem otherwise you'll have to define the default route statically.

How to get gateway ip and nameserver ip using ioctl in linux

To get the default gateway you can parse /proc/net/route:

# cat /proc/net/route
Iface   Destination     Gateway         Flags   RefCnt  Use     Metric  Mask   MTU      Window  IRTT
eth0    00000000        010110AC        0003    0       0       0       000000000       0       0

If you need nameserver address, parsing /etc/resolv.conf seems like a reliable option to me.

any api in c to alter route table in linux

The general strategy for answering questions of this form is strace. Run

strace ip route add multicast dev

or similar and look at what syscalls it performs. I suspect it's using "netlink" which is an arcane Linux-specific protocol for communicating with the kernel network system via a special type of socket.

Rather than trying to implement netlink protocol in your application, I think it would make more sense to invoke the necessary ip route command via posix_spawn (or legacy fork + execve).

can I read/write the routing table in C without using system() command?

You can open a netlink socket and send route update messages. There is an article about how to do this.

---

Related Topics