Documentation/networking/tuntap.rst
Source file repositories/reference/linux-study-clean/Documentation/networking/tuntap.rst
File Facts
- System
- Linux kernel
- Corpus path
Documentation/networking/tuntap.rst- Extension
.rst- Size
- 8313 bytes
- Lines
- 260
- Domain
- Support Tooling And Documentation
- Bucket
- Documentation
- Inferred role
- Support Tooling And Documentation: documentation
- Status
- atlas-only
Why This File Exists
Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Repository support layer: documentation, build tooling, samples, user-space helper tools, generated initramfs support, licenses, and validation utilities.
- Touches IRQ or DMA behavior; this matters for the representative real-device path.
- Defines or uses C structs; map object ownership, embedded links, reference counts, and lock ownership.
Dependency Surface
linux/if.hlinux/if_tun.h
Detected Declarations
function ioctlfunction protocolfunction ioctl
Annotated Snippet
if( (err = ioctl(fd, TUNSETIFF, (void *) &ifr)) < 0 ){
close(fd);
return err;
}
strcpy(dev, ifr.ifr_name);
return fd;
}
3.2 Frame format
----------------
If flag IFF_NO_PI is not set each frame format is::
Flags [2 bytes]
Proto [2 bytes]
Raw protocol(IP, IPv6, etc) frame.
3.3 Multiqueue tuntap interface
-------------------------------
From version 3.8, Linux supports multiqueue tuntap which can uses multiple
file descriptors (queues) to parallelize packets sending or receiving. The
device allocation is the same as before, and if user wants to create multiple
queues, TUNSETIFF with the same device name must be called many times with
IFF_MULTI_QUEUE flag.
``char *dev`` should be the name of the device, queues is the number of queues
to be created, fds is used to store and return the file descriptors (queues)
created to the caller. Each file descriptor were served as the interface of a
queue which could be accessed by userspace.
::
#include <linux/if.h>
#include <linux/if_tun.h>
int tun_alloc_mq(char *dev, int queues, int *fds)
{
struct ifreq ifr;
int fd, err, i;
if (!dev)
return -1;
memset(&ifr, 0, sizeof(ifr));
/* Flags: IFF_TUN - TUN device (no Ethernet headers)
* IFF_TAP - TAP device
*
* IFF_NO_PI - Do not provide packet information
* IFF_MULTI_QUEUE - Create a queue of multiqueue device
*/
ifr.ifr_flags = IFF_TAP | IFF_NO_PI | IFF_MULTI_QUEUE;
strcpy(ifr.ifr_name, dev);
for (i = 0; i < queues; i++) {
if ((fd = open("/dev/net/tun", O_RDWR)) < 0)
goto err;
err = ioctl(fd, TUNSETIFF, (void *)&ifr);
if (err) {
close(fd);
goto err;
}
fds[i] = fd;
}
return 0;
err:
for (--i; i >= 0; i--)
close(fds[i]);
return err;
Annotation
- Immediate include surface: `linux/if.h`, `linux/if_tun.h`.
- Detected declarations: `function ioctl`, `function protocol`, `function ioctl`.
- Atlas domain: Support Tooling And Documentation / Documentation.
- Implementation status: atlas-only.
- IRQ or DMA behavior appears here, which is relevant to the selected PCIe/NVMe device path.
Implementation Notes
- This generated page is the file-by-file coverage layer; curated subsystem chapters should link here when they synthesize a multi-file control flow.
- Core OS pages should be promoted from atlas-only to deep-reviewed when they explain data structures, invariants, locking, lifecycle, and C implementation snippets.
- Driver-family pages are intentionally pattern-oriented unless they are part of the selected PCIe/NVMe representative device path.