Question

I am trying to send across a character array using a transmitter and a receiver program using raw sockets. I am able to get the correct number of bytes sent at the receiver side, but the values printed out are garbage. Could someone help me out here?

Transmitter:

int create_raw_socket(char *dev) 
{   
struct sockaddr_ll sll;
struct ifreq ifr;
int fd, ifi, rb;

bzero(&sll, sizeof(sll)); 
    bzero(&ifr, sizeof(ifr));

fd = socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_ALL));

assert(fd != -1);

strncpy((char *)ifr.ifr_name, dev, IFNAMSIZ);
ifi = ioctl(fd, SIOCGIFINDEX, &ifr);
assert(ifi != -1);
sll.sll_protocol = htons(ETH_P_ALL);
sll.sll_family = AF_PACKET;
sll.sll_ifindex = ifr.ifr_ifindex;
rb = bind(fd, (struct sockaddr *)&sll,sizeof(sll));
assert(rb != -1);

return fd;  
 }


int SendPacket(char *dev ,unsigned char *send_packet, int packet_len) 
{
   int num_sent= 0;
   int sockaddress = create_raw_socket(dev);

   if((num_sent = write(sockaddress, &send_packet, packet_len)) != packet_len)
     { 

         close(sockaddress);
          return 0;
     } 
   else
     { 
        close(sockaddress);
         return 1; 
     }

  }


int main(int argc, char**argv)
{
   int x,fd,s; 

    char *send_packet="HELLO";

   int len = sizeof(send_packet);

   while(1)
   {

   if(!SendPacket((argv[1]), send_packet, len))
     perror("Error sending packet");
   else
     printf("Packet sent successfully with payload : %s\n" ,send_packet);
   }
    return 0; 
 }

Receiver :

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
 struct sockaddr addr;
 int sock_fd, fromlen,s;
 char buf[PACKET_LENGTH];
 char *dev = argv[1];


 while(1)
 {

   fromlen=sizeof(addr);
   sock_fd = create_raw_socket(dev);   /* Creating the raw socket */
   int x= recvfrom(sock_fd,&buf,sizeof(buf),0,&addr,&fromlen);
   printf("\n Number of bytes of data received is %d \n",x);

   printf("\nPayload  Received from client... is %s \n", buf);

   close(sock_fd);

 }
 return 0;
 }

Answer 1

Change

write(sockaddress, &send_packet, packet_len)

to

write(sockaddress, send_packet, packet_len)

send_packet is already the address of the buffer to be sent, if you take the address of this address (more precisely the address of the variable holding the address), you will read the wrong memory for the buffer

Similarly for recvfrom:

recvfrom(sock_fd, buf, sizeof(buf), 0, &addr, &fromlen)