TUN(4) BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual TUN(4)NAMEtun — tunnel software network interface
SYNOPSIS
pseudo-device tunDESCRIPTION
The tun 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.
The network interfaces are named “tun0”, “tun1”, etc, and each one sup‐
ports the usual network-interface ioctl(2)s, such as SIOCSIFADDR and
SIOCSIFNETMASK, 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); writ‐
ing a packet to the control device generates an input packet on the net‐
work interface, as if the (non-existent) hardware had just received it.
The tunnel device, normally /dev/tunN, is exclusive-open (it cannot be
opened if it is already open) and is restricted to the super-user. 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.
Packets can be optionally prepended with the destination address as pre‐
sented to the network interface output routine, tunoutput(). The desti‐
nation address is in struct sockaddr format. The actual length of the
prepended address is in the member sa_len. The packet data follows imme‐
diately.
A write(2) call passes a packet in to be “received” on the pseudo-inter‐
face. Each write(2) call supplies exactly one packet; the packet length
is taken from the amount of data provided to write(2). 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. If “link-layer
mode” is on (see TUNSLMODE below), the actual packet data must be pre‐
ceded by a struct sockaddr. The driver currently only inspects the
sa_family field.
The following ioctl(2) calls are supported (defined in
<net/tun/if_tun.h>):
TUNSDEBUG The argument should be a pointer to an int; this sets the
internal debugging variable to that value. What, if any‐
thing, 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/tun/if_tun.h>.
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 or IFF_BROADCAST. The type of the
corresponding “tunN” interface is set to the supplied type.
If the value is anything else, an EINVAL error occurs. The
interface must be down at the time; if it is up, an EBUSY
error occurs.
TUNSLMODE The argument should be a pointer to an int; a non-zero value
turns on “link-layer” mode, causing packets read from the
tunnel device to be prepended with network destination
address.
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 fam‐
ily.
TUNGIFHEAD The argument should be a pointer to an int; this stores one
if the device is in “multi-af” mode, and zero otherwise in
it.
FIONBIO Turn non-blocking I/O for reads off or on, according as the
argument int's value is or isn't 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 isn't 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 asyn‐
chronous 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 ALSOinet(4), intro(4)AUTHORS
This manual page was originally obtained from NetBSD.
BSD August 6, 2009 BSD
