Files getting corrupted even after writing in binary mode - c

I am trying to send files(any type) from one PC(Client) to another PC(Server) in binary mode
but the program is working fine if I am running it on localhost between two terminals(videos, music everything working fine)
but, when I am running the client in a virtual machine(both machines on ubuntu 20.04) then the transferred file is getting corrupt(e.g. Receiving a Distorted image in the host after transfer).corrupted image
What should I do, I would be very grateful if someone could help me out.
Full code
Here I am attaching the code after the connection is established in TCP mode
Client.c*
write(sockfd, file_name, sizeof(file_name)); // send the file name to server
struct stat obj;
stat(file_name, &obj);
int file_size = obj.st_size;
write(sockfd, &file_size, sizeof(file_size)); // send the file size to server
system("clear");
printf("Sending %s .....\n\nFile size = %.3fkB\n",file_name,(1.0*file_size)/1024);
unsigned char buf[512]; // to store chunks of data from the target file
int count = file_size/512;
int remain = file_size % 512;
struct timeval start,end;
gettimeofday(&start,NULL); //Starting time
while(count--){ // stores the data in buf array
bzero(buf,512);
fread(buf,1,sizeof(buf),f);
// if(n == 512)
write(sockfd,buf,sizeof(buf)); // send the data stored in buf to Server
}
// the last remaining chunk which is less than 512 Byte
if(remain){
bzero(buf,512);
fread(buf,1,remain,f);
write(sockfd,buf,remain); // send the data stored in buf to Server
}
gettimeofday(&end,NULL); //Ending time
double t1 =(end.tv_usec-start.tv_usec); //microseconds count
double time_taken= (end.tv_sec-start.tv_sec)+(t1/MILLION); // total time taken
printf("\n%s sent successfully\n",file_name);
printf("\n\n%lfsec taken.........\n",time_taken);
fclose(f); // close the file
close(sockfd); //close the socket
return 0;
Server.c*
// reading filename from the client side
bzero(file_name,512);
read(newsockfd,file_name,sizeof(file_name));
int file_size;
read(newsockfd,&file_size,sizeof(file_size));
FILE *fp;
fp = fopen(file_name,"wb"); // open corresponding file in write-binary mode
int count = file_size/512;
int remain = file_size%512;
unsigned char buf[512]; // to store a chunk of data coming from client file
system("clear");
printf("Recieving \"%s\" .....\n",file_name);
while(count--){
bzero(buf,512); // clears the buf array
read(newsockfd,buf,sizeof(buf)); // read the corresponding data coming from client to buf array
fwrite(buf,1,sizeof(buf),fp); // write the corresponding data from buf array to file
}
// the last remaining chunk which is less than 512 Byte
if(remain){
bzero(buf,512); // clears the buf array
read(newsockfd,buf,remain); // read the corresponding data coming from client to buf array
fwrite(buf,1,remain,fp); // write the corresponding data from buf array to file
}
// fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_SET);
printf("\n%s received successfully\n",file_name);
fclose(fp); // close the file
close(newsockfd); //close interconnected socket
close(sockfd); // close server socket
return 0;
}

It's hard to tell, but it looks a lot like some extra data is being inserted into the middle of your image file. Since it happens in square blocks, I'm guessing your image file is a JPEG.
And this might be why:
read(newsockfd,buf,sizeof(buf)); // read UP TO 512 bytes
fwrite(buf,1,sizeof(buf),fp); // write EXACTLY 512 bytes
read asks for 512 bytes (the size of buf). But it might not read exactly 512 bytes. If you call read and there are no received bytes yet, it waits for some. But if there are some received bytes, but less than 512, it will return the ones it's received so far, and the return value tells you how many bytes it's returning.
Your program ignores this and writes 512 bytes, no matter how many were read.
You should only write the number of bytes that read says it read. And you should keep looping, until the total number of bytes matches the number you expect. Don't count the number of read calls, count the number of bytes.

Related

Unable to write the complete script onto a device on the serial port

The script file has over 6000 bytes which is copied into a buffer.The contents of the buffer are then written to the device connected to the serial port.However the write function only returns 4608 bytes whereas the buffer contains 6117 bytes.I'm unable to understand why this happens.
{
FILE *ptr;
long numbytes;
int i;
ptr=fopen("compass_script(1).4th","r");//Opening the script file
if(ptr==NULL)
return 1;
fseek(ptr,0,SEEK_END);
numbytes = ftell(ptr);//Number of bytes in the script
printf("number of bytes in the calibration script %ld\n",numbytes);
//Number of bytes in the script is 6117.
fseek(ptr,0,SEEK_SET);
char writebuffer[numbytes];//Creating a buffer to copy the file
if(writebuffer == NULL)
return 1;
int s=fread(writebuffer,sizeof(char),numbytes,ptr);
//Transferring contents into the buffer
perror("fread");
fclose(ptr);
fd = open("/dev/ttyUSB3",O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY | O_NONBLOCK);
//Opening serial port
speed_t baud=B115200;
struct termios serialset;//Setting a baud rate for communication
tcgetattr(fd,&serialset);
cfsetispeed(&serialset,baud);
cfsetospeed(&serialset,baud);
tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&serialset);
long bytesw=0;
tcflush(fd,TCIFLUSH);
printf("\nnumbytes %ld",numbytes);
bytesw=write(fd,writebuffer,numbytes);
//Writing the script into the device connected to the serial port
printf("bytes written%ld\n",bytesw);//Only 4608 bytes are written
close (fd);
return 0;
}
Well, that's the specification. When you write to a file, your process normally is blocked until the whole data is written. And this means your process will run again only when all the data has been written to the disk buffers. This is not true for devices, as the device driver is the responsible of determining how much data is to be written in one pass. This means that, depending on the device driver, you'll get all data driven, only part of it, or even none at all. That simply depends on the device, and how the driver implements its control.
On the floor, device drivers normally have a limited amount of memory to fill buffers and are capable of a limited amount of data to be accepted. There are two policies here, the driver can block the process until more buffer space is available to process it, or it can return with a partial write only.
It's your program resposibility to accept a partial read and continue writing the rest of the buffer, or to pass back the problem to the client module and return only a partial write again. This approach is the most flexible one, and is the one implemented everywhere. Now you have a reason for your partial write, but the ball is on your roof, you have to decide what to do next.
Also, be careful, as you use long for the ftell() function call return value and int for the fwrite() function call... Although your amount of data is not huge and it's not probable that this values cannot be converted to long and int respectively, the return type of both calls is size_t and ssize_t resp. (like the speed_t type you use for the baudrate values) long can be 32bit and size_t a 64bit type.
The best thing you can do is to ensure the whole buffer is written by some code snippet like the next one:
char *p = buffer;
while (numbytes > 0) {
ssize_t n = write(fd, p, numbytes);
if (n < 0) {
perror("write");
/* driver signals some error */
return 1;
}
/* writing 0 bytes is weird, but possible, consider putting
* some code here to cope for that possibility. */
/* n >= 0 */
/* update pointer and numbytes */
p += n;
numbytes -= n;
}
/* if we get here, we have written all numbytes */

Printf makes program work in C, htonl and ntohl not working?

This is for a Linux system, in C. It involves network programming. It is for a file transfer program.
I've been having this problem where this piece of code works unpredictably. It either is completely successful, or the while loop in the client never ends. I discovered that this is because the fileLength variable would sometimes be a huge (negative or positive) value, which I thought was attributed to making some mistake with ntohl. When I put in a print statement, it seemed to work perfectly, without error.
Here is the client code:
//...here includes relevant header files
int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
//socket file descriptor
int sockfd;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf (stderr, "usage: client hostname\n");
exit(1);
}
//...creates socket file descriptor, connects to server
//create buffer for filename
char name[256];
//recieve filename into name buffer, bytes recieved stored in numbytes
if((numbytes = recv (sockfd, name, 255 * sizeof (char), 0)) == -1) {
perror ("recv");
exit(1);
}
//Null terminator after the filename
name[numbytes] = '\0';
//length of the file to recieve from server
long fl;
memset(&fl, 0, sizeof fl);
//recieve filelength from server
if((numbytes = recv (sockfd, &fl, sizeof(long), 0)) == -1) {
perror ("recv");
exit(1);
}
//convert filelength to host format
long fileLength = ntohl(fl);
//check to make sure file does not exist, so that the application will not overwrite exisitng files
if (fopen (name, "r") != NULL) {
fprintf (stderr, "file already present in client directory\n");
exit(1);
}
//open file called name in write mode
FILE *filefd = fopen (name, "wb");
//variable stating amount of data recieved
long bytesTransferred = 0;
//Until the file is recieved, keep recieving
while (bytesTransferred < fileLength) {
printf("transferred: %d\ntotal: %d\n", bytesTransferred, fileLength);
//set counter at beginning of unwritten segment
fseek(filefd, bytesTransferred, SEEK_SET);
//buffer of 256 bytes; 1 byte for byte-length of segment, 255 bytes of data
char buf[256];
//recieve segment from server
if ((numbytes = recv (sockfd, buf, sizeof buf, 0)) == -1) {
perror ("recv");
exit(1);
}
//first byte of buffer, stating number of bytes of data in recieved segment
//converting from char to short requires adding 128, since the char ranges from -128 to 127
short bufLength = buf[0] + 128;
//write buffer into file, starting after the first byte of the buffer
fwrite (buf + 1, 1, bufLength * sizeof (char), filefd);
//add number of bytes of data recieved to bytesTransferred
bytesTransferred += bufLength;
}
fclose (filefd);
close (sockfd);
return 0;
}
This is the server code:
//...here includes relevant header files
int main (int argc, char *argv[]) {
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf (stderr, "usage: server filename\n");
exit(1);
}
//socket file descriptor, file descriptor for specific client connections
int sockfd, new_fd;
//...get socket file descriptor for sockfd, bind sockfd to predetermined port, listen for incoming connections
//...reaps zombie processes
printf("awaiting connections...\n");
while(1) {
//...accepts any incoming connections, gets file descriptor and assigns to new_fd
if (!fork()) {
//close socket file discriptor, only need file descriptor for specific client connection
close (sockfd);
//open a file for reading
FILE *filefd = fopen (argv[1], "rb");
//send filename to client
if (send (new_fd, argv[1], strlen (argv[1]) * sizeof(char), 0) == -1)
{ perror ("send"); }
//put counter at end of selected file, and find length
fseek (filefd, 0, SEEK_END);
long fileLength = ftell (filefd);
//convert length to network form and send it to client
long fl = htonl(fileLength);
//Are we sure this is sending all the bytes??? TEST
if (send (new_fd, &fl, sizeof fl, 0) == -1)
{ perror ("send"); }
//variable stating amount of data unsent
long len = fileLength;
//Until file is sent, keep sending
while(len > 0) {
printf("remaining: %d\ntotal: %d\n", len, fileLength);
//set counter at beginning of unread segment
fseek (filefd, fileLength - len, SEEK_SET);
//length of the segment; 255 unless last segment
short bufLength;
if (len > 255) {
len -= 255;
bufLength = 255;
} else {
bufLength = len;
len = 0;
}
//buffer of 256 bytes; 1 byte for byte-length of segment, 255 bytes of data
char buf[256];
//Set first byte of buffer as the length of the segment
//converting short to char requires subtracting 128
buf[0] = bufLength - 128;
//read file into the buffer starting after the first byte of the buffer
fread(buf + 1, 1, bufLength * sizeof(char), filefd);
//Send data too client
if (send (new_fd, buf, sizeof buf, 0) == -1)
{ perror ("send"); }
}
fclose (filefd);
close (new_fd);
exit (0);
}
close (new_fd);
}
return 0;
}
Note: I've simplified the code a bit, to make it clearer I hope.
Anything beginning with //... represents a bunch of code
You seem to be assuming that each send() will either transfer the full number of bytes specified or will error out, and that each one will will pair perfectly with a recv() on the other side, such that the recv() receives exactly the number of bytes sent by the send() (or error out), no more and no less. Those are not safe assumptions.
You don't show the code by which you set up the network connection. If you're using a datagram-based protocol (i.e. UDP) then you're more likely to get the send/receive boundary matching you expect, but you need to account for the possibility that packets will be lost or corrupted. If you're using a stream-based protocol (i.e. TCP) then you don't have to be too concerned with data loss or corruption, but you have no reason at all to expect boundary-matching behavior.
You need at least three things:
An application-level protocol on top of the network-layer. You've got parts of that already, such as in how you transfer the file length first to advise the client about much content to expect, but you need to do similar for all data transferred that are not of pre-determined, fixed length. Alternatively, invent another means to communicate data boundaries.
Every send() / write() that aims to transfer more than one byte must be performed in a loop to accommodate transfers being broken into multiple pieces. The return value tells you how many of the requested bytes were transferred (or at least how many were handed off to the network stack), and if that's fewer than requested you must loop back to try to transfer the rest.
Every recv() / read() that aims to transfer more than one byte must be performed in a loop to accommodate transfers being broken into multiple pieces. I recommend structuring that along the same lines as described for send(), but you also have the option of receiving data until you see a pre-arranged delimiter. The delimiter-based approach is more complicated, however, because it requires additional buffering on the receiving side.
Without those measures, your server and client can easily get out of sync. Among the possible results of that are that the client interprets part of the file name or part of the file content as the file length.
Even though you removed it from that code I'll make an educated guess and assume that you're using TCP or some other stream protocol here. This means that the data that the servers sends is a stream of bytes and the recv calls will not correspond in the amount of data they get with the send calls.
It is equally legal for your first recv call to just get one byte of data, as it is to get the file name, file size and half of the file.
You say
When I put in a print statement,
but you don't say where. I'll make another educated guess here and guess that you did it on the server before sending the file length. And that happened to shake things enough that the data amounts that were sent on the connection just accidentally happened to match what you were expecting on the client.
You need to define a protocol. Maybe start with a length of the filename, then the filename, then the length of the file. Or always send 256 bytes for the filename regardless of how long it is. Or send the file name as a 0-terminated string and try to figure out the data from that. But you can never assume that just because you called send with X bytes that the recv call will get X bytes.
I believe the issue is actually a compound of everything you and others have said. In the server code you send the name of the file like this:
send (new_fd, argv[1], strlen (argv[1]) * sizeof(char), 0);
and receive it in the client like this:
recv (sockfd, name, 255 * sizeof (char), 0);
This will cause an issue when the filename length is anything less than 255. Since TCP is a stream protocol (as mentioned by #Art), there are no real boundaries between the sends and recvs, which can cause you to receive data in odd places where you are not expecting them.
My recommendation would be to first send the length of the filename, eg:
// server
long namelen = htonl(strlen(argv[1]));
send (new_fd, &namelen, 4, 0);
send (new_fd, argv[1], strlen (argv[1]) * sizeof(char), 0);
// client
long namelen;
recv (sockfd, &namelen, 4, 0);
namelen = ntohl(namelen);
recv (sockfd, name, namelen * sizeof (char), 0);
This will ensure that you are always aware of exactly how long your filename is and makes sure that you aren't accidentally reading your file length from somewhere in the middle of your file (which is what I expect is happening currently).
edit.
Also, be cautious when you are sending sized numbers. If you use the sizeof call on them, you may be sending and receiving different sizes. This is why I hard-coded the sizes in the send and recv for the name length so that there is no confusion on either side.
Well, after some testing, I discovered that the issue causing the problem did have something to do with htonl(), though I had still read the data incorrectly in the beginning. It wasn't that htonl() wasn't working at all, but that I didn't realize a 'long' has different lengths depending on system architecture (thanks #tofro). That is to say the length of a 'long' integer on 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems is 4 bytes and 8 bytes, respectively. And the htonl() function (from arpa/inet.h) for 4-byte integers. I was using a 64-bit OS, which explains why the value was being fudged. I fixed the issue by using the int32_t variable (from stdint.h) to store the file length. So the main issue in this case was not that it was becoming out of sync (I think). But as for everyone's advice towards developing an actual protocol, I think I know what exactly you mean, I definitely understand why it's important, and I'm currently working towards it. Thank you all for all your help.
EDIT: Well now that it has been several years, and I know a little more, I know that this explanation doesn't make sense. All that would result from long being larger than I expected (8 bytes rather than 4) is that there's some implicit casting going on. I used sizeof(long) in the original code rather than hardcoding it to assume 4 bytes, so that particular (faulty) assumption of mine shouldn't have produced the bug I saw.
The problem is almost certainly what everyone else said: one call to recv was not getting all of the bytes representing the file length. At the time I doubted this was the real cause of the behaviour I saw, because the file name (of arbitrary length) I was sending through was never partially sent (i.e. the client always created a file of the correct filename). Only the file length was messed up. My hypothesis at the time was that recv mostly respected message boundaries, and while recv can possibly only send part of the data, it was more likely that it was sending it all and there was another bug in my code. I now know this isn't true at all, and TCP doesn't care.
I'm a little curious as to why I didn't see other unexpected behaviour as well (e.g. the file name being wrong on the receiving end), and I wanted to investigate further, but despite managing to find the files, I can't seem to reproduce the problem now. I suppose I'll never know, but at least I understand the main issue here.

Transfer files with sockets

I'm trying to transfer files (in this case, a .jpg file) with sockets in C. I have my client and my server code, but I don't know why the transfer file has more bytes than the original file. Here's the code:
SERVER
/***************************************************
*
* Starting to send data file
*
***************************************************/
// Read the size of the file
recv(client.fd_client, &file.size_file, sizeof(int), 0);
recv(client.fd_client, &file.size_string, sizeof(int), 0);
recv(client.fd_client, &file.name_of_file, file.size_string, 0);
printf("Size of the file: %.3f kB\n", file.size_file/1000.);
printf("Receiving the file \"%s\"...\n", file.name_of_file);
if((file.fd_file = creat(file.name_of_file, S_IRWXU)) < 0) {
error("Can't open the file: ");
}
while(1) {
bzero(buffer, SIZE_BUF);
if((numb_bytes = read(client.fd_client, buffer, SIZE_BUF)) < 0) {
error("Can't read the file.");
}
write(file.fd_file, buffer, numb_bytes);
received += numb_bytes;
printf("Received: %.3fkB (%.3f/%.3f) kB\n", numb_bytes/1000., recibed/1000., file.size_file/1000.);
if(numb_bytes == 0)
break;
}
printf("Recibidos %.3f/%.3f kB\n", recibed/1000., file.size_file/1000.);
CLIENT
/***************************************************
*
* Starting to send data file
*
***************************************************/
// Use strncpy!
strcpy(file.name_of_file, argv[3]);
file.fd_file = open(file.name_of_file, 0);
fstat(file.fd_file, &stat_file);
file.size_file = (unsigned int) stat_file.st_size;
file.size_string = (unsigned int) strlen(file.name_of_file) + 1;
printf("Size of the file: %.3f kB.\n", file.size_file/1000.);
printf("Sending the file \"%s\"...\n", file.name_of_file);
// Send data file
write(conection.sockfd, &file.size_file, sizeof(file.size_file));
write(conection.sockfd, &file.size_string, sizeof(file.size_string));
write(conection.sockfd, &file.name_of_file, sizeof(file.name_of_file));
while(1) {
sended += sendfile(conection.sockfd, file.fd_file, NULL, SIZE_BUF);
printf("send: %d\n", sended);
printf("num_bytes: %d\n", num_bytes);
if(sended == file.size_file)
break;
}
printf("Sended %.3f/%.3f kB\n", sended/1000., file.size_file/1000.);
And I have a couple of questions:
The transfer of the size and the name of the file happen correctly. What I don't understand is why when I use ntohl it gives me garbage. If I'm right, ntohl and ntos both use before transfer numbers with sockets because of the Little and Big Endian. So why does that happen?
The transfer of the file happens correctly too, but the client transfers or the server receives more bytes than the original file size. I try to transfer an image, but it can't open. So I tried with the source code of the client and it arrives fine to the server (with more bytes, as before), but when I open it has garbage at the top and then the source code. I think that the transfer occurs fine but arrives more bytes than needed. Can anyone give me a clue why this happens?
I'm transferring the file in 1024kB blocks, because when I tried to send the whole file with a single call I never can send it all. I saw examples on the Internet where they fixed some kind of offset until where it transfer and start to transfer again from this point. Is this necessary? At first I think it isn't, because I don't use it and the file arrives "good", like it automatically knows from where to continue the read of the file.
You're sending the entire name buffer:
write(conection.sockfd, &file.name_of_file, sizeof(file.name_of_file));
but reading only the length sent from the previous field:
recv(client.fd_client, &file.size_string, sizeof(int), 0);
recv(client.fd_client, &file.name_of_file, file.size_string, 0);
The difference between the buffer size and the string length is likely you're differential of additional file length. You can address this by changing this:
write(conection.sockfd, &file.name_of_file, sizeof(file.name_of_file));
to this, in your client code:
write(conection.sockfd, &file.name_of_file, file.size_string);
I'll review the additional sub-questions, but this is the primary reason your file size is wrong. I can't really make an educated decision on the correctness of your use of htonl and ntohl because you didn't include the code that transmogs those fields. It could be a problem with that. you may way to keep the sizes native in the structures at all times, and read them into temp vars, assigning the results afterward by sending said-vars through ntohl on the receiving side, and just sending the temp vars (after they receive the translations via htonl) on the sending side.

How to send and receive bytes with socket apis?

Hi i have written a server application which accepts a name from the client which usually is a file name.It opens the file ,reads the contents into a buffer and then transmits the buffer over the ethernet using send().But the problem arises in the client side where all the bytes are not received successfully.I receive only a part of what i send.
For your reference ,here's the code snippet for the server side:
Server:
fp = fopen(filename,"r+");
strcpy(str,"");
fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_END);
size = ftell(fp);
fseek(fp, 0L, SEEK_SET);
fread(str, size, 1,fp);
fclose(fp);
printf("Size of the file is : %d\n",size);
sprintf(filename, "%d", size);
n = send(nsd, filename, strlen(filename), 0);
while(size > 0){
n = send(nsd, str, strlen(str), 0);
printf("%d bytes sent successfully\n",n);
if(n == 0) break;
sentbytes = sentbytes + n;
size = size - sentbytes;
}
Please help me with writing the client app.I am currently confused about how to go about writing it.Shall i place the recv() part in a while(1) loop so that the client keeps running until all the bytes have been received successfully?
EDITED
For starters, you could both read from the file and write to the socket in chunks at the same time.
Since, you are transferring data over TCP, remember that data is transferred reliably as a stream and not as messages. So, don't make assumptions about how the data is recv'd except for the order.
Here is how it could be written:
open socket
open file
size_of_file = read_file_size(file);
send(socket, &size_of_file, sizeof(int), ...)
while (all is written)
read fixed chunk from file
write as much was read to the socket
cleanup // close file, socket
As for the recv part, I think it is best you send the file size over as an integer and keep reading in a while loop until you have recv'd as many bytes as you are sending from the server.
It's like this:
recv(socket, &size_of_msg, sizeof(int), ...)
while(all is read)
read fixed chunk from the socket
cleanup
Well I see atleast some issue with the way you are sending message over socket.
First from the man page of fread:
The function fread() reads nmemb elements of data, each size bytes
long, from the stream pointed to by stream, storing them at the loca-
tion given by ptr.
and what you are trying is this:
fread(str, size, 1,fp);
I assume what you meant was
fread(str, 1,size,fp);
Though it shold not casue the issue.
But the problem lies here:
n = send(nsd, str, strlen(str), 0);
printf("%d bytes sent successfully\n",n);
if(n == 0) break;
sentbytes = sentbytes + n;
size = size - sentbytes;
Though you are decreasing 'size' by decreasing by number of bytes successfully send, where are you extending str to point to new buffer location where data will be send.This will only resend initial bytes of the buffer repeatedly.
str += n; //Assuming str is char*
will solve your issue.
Using strlen doesn't seem appropriate. You've read the file, you know how long it is, so why do strlen? Either you'll just get the same result (so it's redundant) or you'll get something else (so it's a bug).
"Shall i place the recv() part in a while(1) loop so that the client keeps running until all the bytes have been received successfully?"
Something like that. Never presume that a recv() call got everything that was sent -- tcp/ip breaks messages into packets at a lower level, and recv() will return after reading whatever amount of data has actually been received at whatever point. You don't have to worry about that directly, except in so far as you do need to use some kind of protocol to indicate how long a message is so the receiver knows how much to read, then eg.:
char buffer[4096];
int msgsz = 600, // see below
sofar = 0,
cur;
while (sofar < msgsz) {
cur = recv (
socket_fd,
&buffer[sofar],
msgsz - sofar,
0
);
if (cur == -1) {
// error
break;
} else if (cur == 0) {
// disconnected
break;
}
sofar += cur;
}
WRT msgsz, you would include this somewhere in a fixed length header, which is read first. A simple version of that might be just 4 bytes containing a uint32_t, ie, an int with the length. You could also use a null terminated string with a number in it, but that means reading until '\0' is found.

linux virtual file as device driver

I write a linux char device driver to simulate a file. The data is stored in an array and I want to implement a "read-file"-handler...
static ssize_t data_read(struct file *f, char __user *buf, size_t count, loff_t *f_pos){
char *msg_pointer;
int bytes_read = 0;
if(vault.storage==NULL)
return -EFAULT;
msg_pointer = vault.storage + *f_pos;
while (count && (*f_pos < vault.size) ) {
put_user(*(msg_pointer++), buf++);
count--;
bytes_read++;
++*f_pos;
}
return bytes_read;
}
vault.storage is a pointer to a kmalloc-creation. If I test the code by copying with dd it works as expected, but when I want to open the file with C
if((fp_data = open("/dev/vault0", O_RDWR)) < 0){
perror("could not open file.\n");
}
err = write(fp_data, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890", 36);
if (err < 0){
perror("failed to write to sv \n");
}
read(fp_data, buffer, 36);
read(fp_data, buffer, 36);
the first read-command returns 4.. the second 0 - how is this possible?
write performed on a file is not guaranteed to write all the bytes requested atomically ... that is only reserved for a pipe or FIFO when the requested write-amount is less than PIPE_BUF in size. For instance, write can be interrupted by a signal after writing some bytes, and there will be other instances where write will not output the full number of requested bytes before returning. Therefore you should be testing the number of bytes written before reading back any information into a buffer to make sure you are attempting to read-back the same number of bytes written.
Put a printk in the data_read call and print the count and print what is returned to the user(check the value of bytes_read). The bytes_read is returned to the read() call in the use space. Make sure you are returning correct value. And you can also print the fpos and check what is happening.
Here I assume that your drivers read and write functions are called properly, I mean major and minor numbers of your device file belongs to your driver

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