recvfrom() only gets up to 2048 bytes from UDP socket - sockets

I have to call the function repeatedly to get all data, given that the len argument is set to 10240. But this results in blocking at last. How can I get all the data and safely return in a platform independent way?
BTW, I use netcat at the sender side:
cat ocr_pi.png | nc -u server 5555
Is this issue relative to nc's behavior? I didn't find any parameter to set UDP packet size(-O is for TCP).
Thanks.

UDP sends and receives data as messages. In the len argument, you tell recvfrom() the max message size you can receive, and then recvfrom() waits until a full message arrives, regardless of its size. UDP messages are self-contained. Unlike TCP, a UDP message cannot be partially sent/received. It is an all-or-nothing thing. If the size of the received message is greater than the len value you specify, the message is discarded and you get an error.
The only way recvfrom() blocks is if there is no message available to read. If you don't want to block, use select() (or pselect() or epoll or other platform equivalent) to specify a timeout to wait for a message to arrive, and then call recvfrom() only if there is actually something to read.

Related

I can not sent short messages by TCP protocol

I have a trouble to tune TCP client-server communication.
My current project has a client, running on PC (C#) and a server,
running on embedded Linux 4.1.22-ltsi.
Them use UDP communication to exchanging data.
The client and server work in blocking mode and
send short messages one to 2nd
(16, 60, 200 bytes etc.) that include either command or set of parameters.
The messages do note include any header with message length because
UDP is message oriented protocol. Its recvfrom() API returns number of received bytes.
For my server's program structure is important to get and process entire alone message.
The problem is raised when I try to implement TCP communication type instead of UDP.
The server's receive buffer (recv() TCP API) is 2048 bytes:
#define UDP_RX_BUF_SIZE 2048
numbytes = recv(fd_connect, rx_buffer, UDP_RX_BUF_SIZE, MSG_WAITALL/*BLOCKING_MODE*/);
So, the recv() API returns from waiting when rx_buffer is full, i.e after it receives
2048 bytes. It breaks all program approach. In other words, when client send 16 bytes command
to server and waits an answer from it, server's recv() keeps the message
"in stomach", until it will receive 2048 bytes.
I tried to fix it as below, without success:
On client side (C#) I set the socket parameter theSocket.NoDelay.
When I checked this on the sniffer I saw that client sends messages "as I want",
with requested length.
On server side I set TCP_NODELAY socket option to 1
int optval= 1;
setsockopt(fd,IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_NODELAY, &optval, sizeof(optval);
On server side (Linux) I checked socket options SO_SNDLOWAT/SO_RCVLOWAT and they are 1 byte each one.
Please see the attached sniffer's log picture. 10.0.0.10 is a client. 10.0.0.106 is a server. It is seen, that client activates PSH flag (push), informing the server side to move the incoming data to application immediately and do not fill a buffer.
Additional question: what is SSH encrypted packets that runs between the sides. I suppose that it is my Eclipse debugger on PC (running server application through the same Ethernet connection) sends them. Am I right?
So, my problem is how to cause `recv() API to return each short message (16, 60, 200 bytes etc.) instead of accumulating them until receiving buffer fills.
TCP is connection oriented and it also maintains the order in which packets are sent and received.
Having said that, in TCP client, you will receive the stream of bytes and not the individual udp message as in UDP. So you will need to send the packet length and marker as the initial bytes.
So client can first find the packet length and then read data till packet length is reached and then expect new packet length.
You can also check for library like netty, zmq to do this extra work

Using "send" to tcp socket/Windows/c

For c send function(blocking way) it's specified what function returns with size of sent bytes when it's received on destinations. I'm not sure that I understand all nuances, also after writing "demo" app with WSAIoctl and WSARecv on server side.
When send returns with less bytes number than asked in buffer-length parameter?
What is considered as "received on destinations"? My first guess it's when it sit on server's OS buffer and server application is notified. My second one it's when server application recv call have read it fully?
Unless you are using a (somewhat exotic) library, a send on a socket will return the number of bytes passed to the TCP buffer successfully, not the number of bytes received by the peer (see Microsoft´s docs for example).
When you are streaming data via a socket, you need to check the bytes effectively accepted into the TCP send buffer. That´s why usually a send command is inside a loop that will issue several sends if needed.
Errors in send are local: for example if the socket is closed by the peer during a sending operation (making your socket invalid) or if the operation times out (TCP buffer not emptying, i. e. peer not receiving data fast enough or some other trouble).
After all send is completed you have no easy way of knowing if the peer received all the bytes you sent. You´ll usually just issue closesocket and make sure that your socket has a proper linger option set (i. e. only close after timeout or sucessfully finishing the send). Alternatively you wait for a confirmation by the peer (for example via a recv that returns zero bytes, indicating that the connection was gracefully closed).
Edit: typo

TCP blocking socket - possibility of recv small amount of bytes in different packets

If the server sends 4 bytes
send(sock, buffer1, 4, 0);
And client waits for exactly 4 bytes
recv(sock, buffer2, 4, 0);
Is there a possibility that less than 4 bytes will be written to buffer2?
No other send or recv was made before.
If there is no possibility, what's the maximum size of buffer that send can do, so that recv could get the same buffer size in one call.
There's no such thing as a "message", except what you delimit yourself.
REPEAT: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MESSAGE.
TCP does not send messages, it sends an octet stream.
You need to send in a loop, in case there is a backlog of unacknowledged data and send does not use the whole buffer you passed in. You need to recv in a loop, in case the sending stack chunked it in an unexpected way. You need to delimit your messages (eg by prepending a network-endian length), so you can recover them properly.
From the man page for recv:
"These calls return the number of bytes received, or -1 if an error occurred.
For TCP sockets, the return value 0 means the peer has closed its half side of the connection."
As such recv is always allowed return all of the bytes sent, fewer than the bytes sent, or none of the bytes sent. You cannot assume anything simply because you happen to know what send is doing at the other end of the connection.
There is no way to guarantee that you can always get complete message.
Yes, there's this possibility. In fact, recv gives you as return value the amount of bytes received.

read() on a NON-BLOCKING tun/tap file descriptor gets EAGAIN error

I want to read IP packets from a non-blocking tun/tap file descriptor tunfd
I set the tunfd as non-blocking and register a READ_EV event for it in libevent.
when the event is triggered, I read the first 20 bytes first to get the IP header, and then
read the rest.
nr_bytes = read(tunfd, buf, 20);
...
ip_len = .... // here I get the IP length
....
nr_bytes = read(tunfd, buf+20, ip_len-20);
but for the read(tunfd, buf+20, ip_len-20)
I got EAGAIN error, actually there should be a full packet,
so there should be some bytes,
why I get such an error?
tunfd is not compatible with non-blocking mode or libevent?
thanks!
Reads and writes with TUN/TAP, much like reads and writes on datagram sockets, must be for complete packets. If you read into a buffer that is too small to fit a full packet, the buffer will be filled up and the rest of the packet will be discarded. For writes, if you write a partial packet, the driver will think it's a full packet and deliver the truncated packet through the tunnel device.
Therefore, when you read a TUN/TAP device, you must supply a buffer that is at least as large as the configured MTU on the tun or tap interface.

limitation of the reception buffer

I established a connection with a client this way:
gen_tcp:listen(1234,[binary,{packet,0},{reuseaddr,true},{active,false},{recbuf,2048}]).
This code performs message processing:
loop(Socket)->
inet:setops(Socket,[{active,once}],
receive
{tcp,Socket,Data}->
handle(Data),
loop(Socket);
{Pid,Cmd}->
gen_tcp:send(Socket,Cmd),
loop(Socket);
{tcp_close,Socket}->
% ...
end.
My OS is Windows. When the size of the message is 1024 bytes, I lose bytes in Data. The server sends ACK + FIN to the client.
I believe that the Erlang is limited to 1024 bytes, therefore I defined recbuf.
Where the problem is: Erlang, Windows, hardware?
Thanks.
You may be setting the receive buffer far too small. Erlang certainly isn't limited to a 1024 byte buffer. You can check for yourself by doing the following in the shell:
{ok, S} = gen_tcp:connect("www.google.com", 80, [{active,false}]),
O = inet:getopts(S, [recbuf]),
gen_tcp:close(S),
O.
On Mac OS X I get a default receive buffer size of about 512Kb.
With {packet, 0} parsing, you'll receive tcp data in whatever chunks the network stack chooses to send it in, so you have to do message boundary parsing and buffering yourself. Do you have a reliable way to check message boundaries in the wire protocol? If so, receive the tcp data and append it to a buffer variable until you have a complete message. Then call handle on the complete message and remove the complete message from the buffer before continuing.
We could probably help you more if you gave us some information on the client and the protocol in use.