Raw Sockets : Receiver printing garbage values - c

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)

Answer 2

You have several problems:
This line
if((num_sent = write(sockaddress, &send_packet, packet_len)) != packet_len)
Should say just send_packet instead of &send_packet. send_packet is a pointer that points to the desired packet data, so there's no need to take its address -- you don't want to write out the literal address of that pointer into the packet, that just simply won't work.
This is wrong:
char *send_packet="HELLO";
int len = sizeof(send_packet);
sizeof(send_packet) will always be the size of a pointer on your system, typically either 4 or 8 bytes. You really want to either declare send_packet as an array type (e.g. char send_packet[] = ...), or use strlen to compute its length at runtime (e.g. int len = strlen(send_packet) + 1;). In your case, you're either sending too little data (4 bytes) or too much data (8 bytes), both of which are problematic.
Your printf code in the client assumes that the data it receives is null-terminated, which it is not necessarily. You should either manually null-terminate the data before printing it (or using any other string functions, for that matter), or tell printf the limit of how much data to print. I'd suggest null-terminating it like so:
char buf[PACKET_LENGTH + 1]; // +1 for null terminator
int x = recvfrom(sock_fd,buf,PACKET_LENGTH,0,&addr,&fromlen);
if(x >= 0)
buf[x] = 0;
Your code has poor const correctness. SendPacket should take a const char* instead of char* parameter, and send_packet should either be declared as char[] or as const char*. The conversion from string literals to char* is deprecated and should be avoided in all new C code.

Answer 3

Using printf to print the buffer will print a string until the en of string character is reached. If you see the original string followed by garbage characters, this may be the reason.
You should probably introduce a 0 after the last byte returned by recvfrom, or you will print whatever value was in the memory that recvfrom did not overwrite. It could even try to access memory outside the buffer.
Try adding something like:
int x= recvfrom(sock_fd,&buf,sizeof(buf) - 1,0,&addr,&fromlen);
buf[x - 1] = 0;
Note: that changes the maximum size of what is read, it is just an example of how to do it.