netlink(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual netlink(7)
NAME
netlink - communication between kernel and user space (AF_NETLINK)
SYNOPSIS
#include <asm/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <linux/netlink.h>
netlink_socket = socket(AF_NETLINK, socket_type, netlink_family);
DESCRIPTION
Netlink is used to transfer information between the kernel and user-
space processes. It consists of a standard sockets-based interface for
user space processes and an internal kernel API for kernel modules. The
internal kernel interface is not documented in this manual page. There
is also an obsolete netlink interface via netlink character devices;
this interface is not documented here and is provided only for backward
compatibility.
Netlink is a datagram-oriented service. Both SOCK_RAW and SOCK_DGRAM
are valid values for socket_type. However, the netlink protocol does
not distinguish between datagram and raw sockets.
netlink_family selects the kernel module or netlink group to communicate
with. The currently assigned netlink families are:
NETLINK_ROUTE
Receives routing and link updates and may be used to modify the
routing tables (both IPv4 and IPv6), IP addresses, link parame-
ters, neighbor setups, queueing disciplines, traffic classes, and
packet classifiers (see rtnetlink(7)).
NETLINK_W1 (Linux 2.6.13 to Linux 2.16.17)
Messages from 1-wire subsystem.
NETLINK_USERSOCK
Reserved for user-mode socket protocols.
NETLINK_FIREWALL (up to and including Linux 3.4)
Transport IPv4 packets from netfilter to user space. Used by
ip_queue kernel module. After a long period of being declared
obsolete (in favor of the more advanced nfnetlink_queue feature),
NETLINK_FIREWALL was removed in Linux 3.5.
NETLINK_SOCK_DIAG (since Linux 3.3)
Query information about sockets of various protocol families from
the kernel (see sock_diag(7)).
NETLINK_INET_DIAG (since Linux 2.6.14)
An obsolete synonym for NETLINK_SOCK_DIAG.
NETLINK_NFLOG (up to and including Linux 3.16)
Netfilter/iptables ULOG.
NETLINK_XFRM
IPsec.
NETLINK_SELINUX (since Linux 2.6.4)
SELinux event notifications.
NETLINK_ISCSI (since Linux 2.6.15)
Open-iSCSI.
NETLINK_AUDIT (since Linux 2.6.6)
Auditing.
NETLINK_FIB_LOOKUP (since Linux 2.6.13)
Access to FIB lookup from user space.
NETLINK_CONNECTOR (since Linux 2.6.14)
Kernel connector. See Documentation/driver-api/connector.rst (or
/Documentation/connector/connector.* in Linux 5.2 and earlier)
in the Linux kernel source tree for further information.
NETLINK_NETFILTER (since Linux 2.6.14)
Netfilter subsystem.
NETLINK_SCSITRANSPORT (since Linux 2.6.19)
SCSI Transports.
NETLINK_RDMA (since Linux 3.0)
Infiniband RDMA.
NETLINK_IP6_FW (up to and including Linux 3.4)
Transport IPv6 packets from netfilter to user space. Used by
ip6_queue kernel module.
NETLINK_DNRTMSG
DECnet routing messages.
NETLINK_KOBJECT_UEVENT (since Linux 2.6.10)
Kernel messages to user space.
NETLINK_GENERIC (since Linux 2.6.15)
Generic netlink family for simplified netlink usage.
NETLINK_CRYPTO (since Linux 3.2)
Netlink interface to request information about ciphers registered
with the kernel crypto API as well as allow configuration of the
kernel crypto API.
Netlink messages consist of a byte stream with one or multiple nlmsghdr
headers and associated payload. The byte stream should be accessed only
with the standard NLMSG_* macros. See netlink(3) for further informa-
tion.
In multipart messages (multiple nlmsghdr headers with associated payload
in one byte stream) the first and all following headers have the
NLM_F_MULTI flag set, except for the last header which has the type
NLMSG_DONE.
After each nlmsghdr the payload follows.
struct nlmsghdr {
__u32 nlmsg_len; /* Length of message including header */
__u16 nlmsg_type; /* Type of message content */
__u16 nlmsg_flags; /* Additional flags */
__u32 nlmsg_seq; /* Sequence number */
__u32 nlmsg_pid; /* Sender port ID */
};
nlmsg_type can be one of the standard message types: NLMSG_NOOP message
is to be ignored, NLMSG_ERROR message signals an error and the payload
contains an nlmsgerr structure, NLMSG_DONE message terminates a multi-
part message. Error messages get the original request appended, unless
the user requests to cap the error message, and get extra error data if
requested.
struct nlmsgerr {
int error; /* Negative errno or 0 for acknowledgements */
struct nlmsghdr msg; /* Message header that caused the error */
/*
* followed by the message contents
* unless NETLINK_CAP_ACK was set
* or the ACK indicates success (error == 0).
* For example Generic Netlink message with attributes.
* message length is aligned with NLMSG_ALIGN()
*/
/*
* followed by TLVs defined in enum nlmsgerr_attrs
* if NETLINK_EXT_ACK was set
*/
};
A netlink family usually specifies more message types, see the appropri-
ate manual pages for that, for example, rtnetlink(7) for NETLINK_ROUTE.
Standard flag bits in nlmsg_flags
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
NLM_F_REQUEST Must be set on all request messages.
NLM_F_MULTI The message is part of a multipart message ter-
minated by NLMSG_DONE.
NLM_F_ACK Request for an acknowledgement on success.
NLM_F_ECHO Echo this request.
Additional flag bits for GET requests
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
NLM_F_ROOT Return the complete table instead of a single
entry.
NLM_F_MATCH Return all entries matching criteria passed in
message content. Not implemented yet.
NLM_F_ATOMIC Return an atomic snapshot of the table.
NLM_F_DUMP Convenience macro; equivalent to
(NLM_F_ROOT|NLM_F_MATCH).
Note that NLM_F_ATOMIC requires the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability or an ef-
fective UID of 0.
Additional flag bits for NEW requests
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
NLM_F_REPLACE Replace existing matching object.
NLM_F_EXCL Don't replace if the object already exists.
NLM_F_CREATE Create object if it doesn't already exist.
NLM_F_APPEND Add to the end of the object list.
nlmsg_seq and nlmsg_pid are used to track messages. nlmsg_pid shows the
origin of the message. Note that there isn't a 1:1 relationship between
nlmsg_pid and the PID of the process if the message originated from a
netlink socket. See the ADDRESS FORMATS section for further informa-
tion.
Both nlmsg_seq and nlmsg_pid are opaque to netlink core.
Netlink is not a reliable protocol. It tries its best to deliver a mes-
sage to its destination(s), but may drop messages when an out-of-memory
condition or other error occurs. For reliable transfer the sender can
request an acknowledgement from the receiver by setting the NLM_F_ACK
flag. An acknowledgement is an NLMSG_ERROR packet with the error field
set to 0. The application must generate acknowledgements for received
messages itself. The kernel tries to send an NLMSG_ERROR message for
every failed packet. A user process should follow this convention too.
However, reliable transmissions from kernel to user are impossible in
any case. The kernel can't send a netlink message if the socket buffer
is full: the message will be dropped and the kernel and the user-space
process will no longer have the same view of kernel state. It is up to
the application to detect when this happens (via the ENOBUFS error re-
turned by recvmsg(2)) and resynchronize.
Address formats
The sockaddr_nl structure describes a netlink client in user space or in
the kernel. A sockaddr_nl can be either unicast (only sent to one peer)
or sent to netlink multicast groups (nl_groups not equal 0).
struct sockaddr_nl {
sa_family_t nl_family; /* AF_NETLINK */
unsigned short nl_pad; /* Zero */
pid_t nl_pid; /* Port ID */
__u32 nl_groups; /* Multicast groups mask */
};
nl_pid is the unicast address of netlink socket. It's always 0 if the
destination is in the kernel. For a user-space process, nl_pid is usu-
ally the PID of the process owning the destination socket. However,
nl_pid identifies a netlink socket, not a process. If a process owns
several netlink sockets, then nl_pid can be equal to the process ID only
for at most one socket. There are two ways to assign nl_pid to a
netlink socket. If the application sets nl_pid before calling bind(2),
then it is up to the application to make sure that nl_pid is unique. If
the application sets it to 0, the kernel takes care of assigning it.
The kernel assigns the process ID to the first netlink socket the
process opens and assigns a unique nl_pid to every netlink socket that
the process subsequently creates.
nl_groups is a bit mask with every bit representing a netlink group num-
ber. Each netlink family has a set of 32 multicast groups. When
bind(2) is called on the socket, the nl_groups field in the sockaddr_nl
should be set to a bit mask of the groups which it wishes to listen to.
The default value for this field is zero which means that no multicasts
will be received. A socket may multicast messages to any of the multi-
cast groups by setting nl_groups to a bit mask of the groups it wishes
to send to when it calls sendmsg(2) or does a connect(2). Only
processes with an effective UID of 0 or the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability may
send or listen to a netlink multicast group. Since Linux 2.6.13, mes-
sages can't be broadcast to multiple groups. Any replies to a message
received for a multicast group should be sent back to the sending PID
and the multicast group. Some Linux kernel subsystems may additionally
allow other users to send and/or receive messages. As at Linux 3.0, the
NETLINK_KOBJECT_UEVENT, NETLINK_GENERIC, NETLINK_ROUTE, and
NETLINK_SELINUX groups allow other users to receive messages. No groups
allow other users to send messages.
Socket options
To set or get a netlink socket option, call getsockopt(2) to read or
setsockopt(2) to write the option with the option level argument set to
SOL_NETLINK. Unless otherwise noted, optval is a pointer to an int.
NETLINK_PKTINFO (since Linux 2.6.14)
Enable nl_pktinfo control messages for received packets to get
the extended destination group number.
NETLINK_ADD_MEMBERSHIP
NETLINK_DROP_MEMBERSHIP (since Linux 2.6.14)
Join/leave a group specified by optval.
NETLINK_LIST_MEMBERSHIPS (since Linux 4.2)
Retrieve all groups a socket is a member of. optval is a pointer
to __u32 and optlen is the size of the array. The array is
filled with the full membership set of the socket, and the re-
quired array size is returned in optlen.
NETLINK_BROADCAST_ERROR (since Linux 2.6.30)
When not set, netlink_broadcast() only reports ESRCH errors and
silently ignore ENOBUFS errors.
NETLINK_NO_ENOBUFS (since Linux 2.6.30)
This flag can be used by unicast and broadcast listeners to avoid
receiving ENOBUFS errors.
NETLINK_LISTEN_ALL_NSID (since Linux 4.2)
When set, this socket will receive netlink notifications from all
network namespaces that have an nsid assigned into the network
namespace where the socket has been opened. The nsid is sent to
user space via an ancillary data.
NETLINK_CAP_ACK (since Linux 4.3)
The kernel may fail to allocate the necessary room for the ac-
knowledgement message back to user space. This option trims off
the payload of the original netlink message. The netlink message
header is still included, so the user can guess from the sequence
number which message triggered the acknowledgement.
VERSIONS
The socket interface to netlink first appeared Linux 2.2.
Linux 2.0 supported a more primitive device-based netlink interface
(which is still available as a compatibility option). This obsolete in-
terface is not described here.
NOTES
It is often better to use netlink via libnetlink or libnl than via the
low-level kernel interface.
BUGS
This manual page is not complete.
EXAMPLES
The following example creates a NETLINK_ROUTE netlink socket which will
listen to the RTMGRP_LINK (network interface create/delete/up/down
events) and RTMGRP_IPV4_IFADDR (IPv4 addresses add/delete events) multi-
cast groups.
struct sockaddr_nl sa;
memset(&sa, 0, sizeof(sa));
sa.nl_family = AF_NETLINK;
sa.nl_groups = RTMGRP_LINK | RTMGRP_IPV4_IFADDR;
fd = socket(AF_NETLINK, SOCK_RAW, NETLINK_ROUTE);
bind(fd, (struct sockaddr *) &sa, sizeof(sa));
The next example demonstrates how to send a netlink message to the ker-
nel (pid 0). Note that the application must take care of message se-
quence numbers in order to reliably track acknowledgements.
struct nlmsghdr *nh; /* The nlmsghdr with payload to send */
struct sockaddr_nl sa;
struct iovec iov = { nh, nh->nlmsg_len };
struct msghdr msg;
msg = { &sa, sizeof(sa), &iov, 1, NULL, 0, 0 };
memset(&sa, 0, sizeof(sa));
sa.nl_family = AF_NETLINK;
nh->nlmsg_pid = 0;
nh->nlmsg_seq = ++sequence_number;
/* Request an ack from kernel by setting NLM_F_ACK */
nh->nlmsg_flags |= NLM_F_ACK;
sendmsg(fd, &msg, 0);
And the last example is about reading netlink message.
int len;
/* 8192 to avoid message truncation on platforms with
page size > 4096 */
struct nlmsghdr buf[8192/sizeof(struct nlmsghdr)];
struct iovec iov = { buf, sizeof(buf) };
struct sockaddr_nl sa;
struct msghdr msg;
struct nlmsghdr *nh;
msg = { &sa, sizeof(sa), &iov, 1, NULL, 0, 0 };
len = recvmsg(fd, &msg, 0);
for (nh = (struct nlmsghdr *) buf; NLMSG_OK (nh, len);
nh = NLMSG_NEXT (nh, len)) {
/* The end of multipart message */
if (nh->nlmsg_type == NLMSG_DONE)
return;
if (nh->nlmsg_type == NLMSG_ERROR)
/* Do some error handling */
...
/* Continue with parsing payload */
...
}
SEE ALSO
cmsg(3), netlink(3), capabilities(7), rtnetlink(7), sock_diag(7)
]8;;ftp://ftp.inr.ac.ru/ip-routing/iproute2*\information about libnetlink]8;;\
]8;;http://www.infradead.org/~tgr/libnl/\information about libnl]8;;\
RFC 3549 "Linux Netlink as an IP Services Protocol"
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 netlink(7)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:19:46 CET 2025.