Reading/writing Linux's TUN/TAP device using Python.

tun-ping-linux.py

import fcntl
import os
import struct
import subprocess


# Some constants used to ioctl the device file. I got them by a simple C
# program.
TUNSETIFF = 0x400454ca
TUNSETOWNER = TUNSETIFF + 2
IFF_TUN = 0x0001
IFF_TAP = 0x0002
IFF_NO_PI = 0x1000

# Open TUN device file.
tun = open('/dev/net/tun', 'r+b')
# Tall it we want a TUN device named tun0.
ifr = struct.pack('16sH', 'tun0', IFF_TUN | IFF_NO_PI)
fcntl.ioctl(tun, TUNSETIFF, ifr)
# Optionally, we want it be accessed by the normal user.
fcntl.ioctl(tun, TUNSETOWNER, 1000)

# Bring it up and assign addresses.
subprocess.check_call('ifconfig tun0 192.168.7.1 pointopoint 192.168.7.2 up',
        shell=True)

while True:
    # Read an IP packet been sent to this TUN device.
    packet = list(os.read(tun.fileno(), 2048))

    # Modify it to an ICMP Echo Reply packet.
    #
    # Note that I have not checked content of the packet, but treat all packets
    # been sent to our TUN device as an ICMP Echo Request.

    # Swap source and destination address.
    packet[12:16], packet[16:20] = packet[16:20], packet[12:16]

    # Under Linux, the code below is not necessary to make the TUN device to
    # work. I don't know why yet, but if you run tcpdump, you can see the
    # difference.
    if True:
        # Change ICMP type code to Echo Reply (0).
        packet[20] = chr(0)
        # Clear original ICMP Checksum field.
        packet[22:24] = chr(0), chr(0)
        # Calculate new checksum.
        checksum = 0
        # for every 16-bit of the ICMP payload:
        for i in range(20, len(packet), 2):
            half_word = (ord(packet[i]) << 8) + ord(packet[i+1])
            checksum += half_word
        # Get one's complement of the checksum.
        checksum = ~(checksum + 4) & 0xffff
        # Put the new checksum back into the packet.
        packet[22] = chr(checksum >> 8)
        packet[23] = chr(checksum & ((1 << 8) -1))

    # Write the reply packet into TUN device.
    os.write(tun.fileno(), ''.join(packet))

Thank you very much. I found TUNSETIFF = -2147199798 on my router (OpenWrt on WR-703n). I don't know the reason, but it's running well only if I change TUNSETIFF to -2147199798. http://sorz.org/openwrt-py-tun/

Thnx bro. Thnx.

Thanks for code, could you tell me how to create device which survive reboot and how to remove that's devices?

Have you tried this with python3? I get an error on the open call:

tun = open('/dev/net/tun', 'r+b')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "", line 1, in
io.UnsupportedOperation: File or stream is not seekable.

You'll need to make a few changes for it to work with Python3. Disable buffering on the open call, and use an array instead of a list for the packet data.

Something like this works for me: https://gist.github.com/shawnlower/928cc78614ba726aabab1a299c810f2e/revisions

and see https://bugs.python.org/issue20074

Can you provide the code to get the ioctl constants ? I don't know how to find them on my FreeNAS device... Thanks !

Can you provide the code to get the ioctl constants ? I don't know how to find them on my FreeNAS device... Thanks !

The constants are defined in /linux/if_tun.h

i tried on python 3 but getting this error on ioctl call
fcntl.ioctl(tun, TUNSETIFF, ifr)
PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted

i tried on python 3 but getting this error on ioctl call
fcntl.ioctl(tun, TUNSETIFF, ifr)
PermissionError: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted

You need to be root to do this kind of operations (touching system files).