table of contents
TUN(4) | Device Drivers Manual | TUN(4) |
NAME¶
tun
—
SYNOPSIS¶
device tun
DESCRIPTION¶
Thetun
interface is a software loopback mechanism that
can be loosely described as the network interface analog of the
pty(4), that is, tun
does for
network interfaces what the pty(4) driver does for
terminals.
The tun
driver, like the
pty(4) driver, provides two interfaces: an interface like
the usual facility it is simulating (a network interface in the case of
tun
, or a terminal for pty(4)),
and a character-special device “control” interface. A client
program transfers IP (by default) packets to or from the
tun
“control” interface. The
tap(4) interface provides similar functionality at the
Ethernet layer: a client will transfer Ethernet frames to or from a
tap(4) “control” interface.
The network interfaces are named
“tun0
”,
“tun1
”, etc., one for each control
device that has been opened. These network interfaces persist until the
if_tun.ko module is unloaded, or until removed with
the ifconfig(8) command.
tun
devices are created using interface
cloning. This is done using the “ifconfig tunN
create” command. This is the preferred method
of creating tun
devices. The same method allows
removal of interfaces. For this, use the “ifconfig
tunN destroy” command.
If the sysctl(8) variable
net.link.tun.devfs_cloning is non-zero, the
tun
interface permits opens on the special control
device /dev/tun. When this device is opened,
tun
will return a handle for the lowest unused
tun
device (use devname(3) to
determine which).
tun
, such as
ppp(8) and ssh(1). It therefore defaults
to being enabled until further notice.Control devices (once successfully opened) persist until if_tun.ko is unloaded in the same way that network interfaces persist (see above).
Each interface supports the usual network-interface
ioctl(2)s, such as SIOCAIFADDR
and
thus can be used with ifconfig(8) like any other
interface. At boot time, they are POINTOPOINT
interfaces, but this can be changed; see the description of the control
device, below. When the system chooses to transmit a packet on the network
interface, the packet can be read from the control device (it appears as
“input” there); writing a packet to the control device
generates an input packet on the network interface, as if the (non-existent)
hardware had just received it.
The tunnel device
(/dev/tunN) is exclusive-open
(it cannot be opened if it is already open). A read(2)
call will return an error (EHOSTDOWN
) if the
interface is not “ready” (which means that the control device
is open and the interface's address has been set).
Once the interface is ready, read(2) will return
a packet if one is available; if not, it will either block until one is or
return EWOULDBLOCK
, depending on whether
non-blocking I/O has been enabled. If the packet is longer than is allowed
for in the buffer passed to read(2), the extra data will
be silently dropped.
If the TUNSLMODE
ioctl has been set,
packets read from the control device will be prepended with the destination
address as presented to the network interface output routine,
tunoutput
(). The destination address is in
struct sockaddr format. The actual length of the
prepended address is in the member sa_len. If the
TUNSIFHEAD
ioctl has been set, packets will be
prepended with a four byte address family in network byte order.
TUNSLMODE
and TUNSIFHEAD
are
mutually exclusive. In any case, the packet data follows immediately.
A write(2) call passes a packet in to be
“received” on the pseudo-interface. If the
TUNSIFHEAD
ioctl has been set, the address family
must be prepended, otherwise the packet is assumed to be of type
AF_INET
. Each write(2) call
supplies exactly one packet; the packet length is taken from the amount of
data provided to write(2) (minus any supplied address
family). Writes will not block; if the packet cannot be accepted for a
transient reason (e.g., no buffer space available), it is silently dropped;
if the reason is not transient (e.g., packet too large), an error is
returned.
The following ioctl(2) calls are supported
(defined in
<net/if_tun.h>
):
TUNSDEBUG
- The argument should be a pointer to an int; this sets the internal debugging variable to that value. What, if anything, this variable controls is not documented here; see the source code.
TUNGDEBUG
- The argument should be a pointer to an int; this stores the internal debugging variable's value into it.
TUNSIFINFO
- The argument should be a pointer to an struct
tuninfo and allows setting the MTU, the type, and the baudrate of
the tunnel device. The struct tuninfo is declared in
<net/if_tun.h>
.The use of this ioctl is restricted to the super-user.
TUNGIFINFO
- The argument should be a pointer to an struct tuninfo, where the current MTU, type, and baudrate will be stored.
TUNSIFMODE
- The argument should be a pointer to an int; its
value must be either
IFF_POINTOPOINT
orIFF_BROADCAST
and should haveIFF_MULTICAST
OR'd into the value if multicast support is required. The type of the corresponding “tun
N” interface is set to the supplied type. If the value is outside the above range, anEINVAL
error is returned. The interface must be down at the time; if it is up, anEBUSY
error is returned. TUNSLMODE
- The argument should be a pointer to an int; a non-zero value turns off “multi-af” mode and turns on “link-layer” mode, causing packets read from the tunnel device to be prepended with the network destination address (see above).
TUNSIFPID
- Will set the pid owning the tunnel device to the current process's pid.
TUNSIFHEAD
- The argument should be a pointer to an int; a non-zero value turns off “link-layer” mode, and enables “multi-af” mode, where every packet is preceded with a four byte address family.
TUNGIFHEAD
- The argument should be a pointer to an int; the ioctl sets the value to one if the device is in “multi-af” mode, and zero otherwise.
FIONBIO
- Turn non-blocking I/O for reads off or on, according as the argument int's value is or is not zero. (Writes are always non-blocking.)
FIOASYNC
- Turn asynchronous I/O for reads (i.e., generation of
SIGIO
when data is available to be read) off or on, according as the argument int's value is or is not zero. FIONREAD
- If any packets are queued to be read, store the size of the first one into the argument int; otherwise, store zero.
TIOCSPGRP
- Set the process group to receive
SIGIO
signals, when asynchronous I/O is enabled, to the argument int value. TIOCGPGRP
- Retrieve the process group value for
SIGIO
signals into the argument int value.
The control device also supports select(2) for read; selecting for write is pointless, and always succeeds, since writes are always non-blocking.
On the last close of the data device, by default, the interface is
brought down (as if with ifconfig
tunN down
). All queued packets
are thrown away. If the interface is up when the data device is not open
output packets are always thrown away rather than letting them pile up.
SEE ALSO¶
ioctl(2), read(2), select(2), write(2), devname(3), inet(4), intro(4), pty(4), tap(4), ifconfig(8)AUTHORS¶
This manual page was originally obtained from NetBSD.November 30, 2014 | Linux 4.9.0-9-amd64 |