Paul Wouters

placeholder to suppress warning

IPSEC_TTOSA 3 26 Nov 2001 libreswan Library functions
ipsec ttosa ipsec satot ipsec initsaid convert IPsec Security Association IDs to and from text, initialize an SA ID

    #include <libreswan.h>

    typedef struct { ip_address dst; ipsec_spi_t spi; int proto;
     } ip_said;

const char *`ttosa` const char * src size_t srclen ip_said * sa size_t `satot` const ip_said * sa int format char * dst size_t dstlen void `initsaid` const ip_address * addr ipsec_spi_t spi int proto ip_said * dst

## DESCRIPTION

Ttosa converts an ASCII Security Association (SA) specifier into an ip_said structure (containing a destination-host address in network byte order, an SPI number in network byte order, and a protocol code). Satot does the reverse conversion, back to a text SA specifier. Initsaid initializes an ip_said from separate items of information.

An SA is specified in text with a mail-like syntax, e.g. esp.5a7@1.2.3.4. An SA specifier contains a protocol prefix (currently ah, esp, tun, comp, or int), a single character indicating the address family (`.` for IPv4, : for IPv6), an unsigned integer SPI number in hexadecimal (with no 0x prefix), and an IP address. The IP address can be any form accepted by ipsec_ttoaddr 3, e.g. dotted-decimal IPv4 address, colon-hex IPv6 address, or DNS name.

As a special case, the SA specifier %passthrough4 or %passthrough6 signifies the special SA used to indicate that packets should be passed through unaltered. (At present, these are synonyms for tun.0@0.0.0.0 and tun:0@:: respectively, but that is subject to change without notice.) %passthrough is a historical synonym for %passthrough4. These forms are known to both `ttosa` and `satot`, so the internal representation is never visible.

Similarly, the SA specifiers %pass, %drop, %reject, %hold, %trap, and %trapsubnet signify special “magic” SAs used to indicate that packets should be passed, dropped, rejected (dropped with ICMP notification), held, and trapped (sent up to ipsec_pluto 8, with either of two forms of %hold automatically installed) respectively. These forms too are known to both routines, so the internal representation of the magic SAs should never be visible.

The <libreswan.h> header file supplies the ip_said structure, as well as a data type ipsec_spi_t which is an unsigned 32-bit integer. (There is no consistency between kernel and user on what such a type is called, hence the header hides the differences.)

The protocol code uses the same numbers that IP does. For user convenience, given the difficulty in acquiring the exact set of protocol names used by the kernel, <libreswan.h> defines the names SA_ESP, SA_AH, SA_IPIP, and SA_COMP to have the same values as the kernel names IPPROTO_ESP, IPPROTO_AH, IPPROTO_IPIP, and IPPROTO_COMP.

<libreswan.h> also defines SA_INT to have the value `61` (reserved by IANA for “any host internal protocol”) and SPI_PASS, SPI_DROP, SPI_REJECT, SPI_HOLD, and SPI_TRAP to have the values 256-260 (in host byte order) respectively. These are used in constructing the magic SAs (which always have address `0.0.0.0`).

If `satot` encounters an unknown protocol code, e.g. 77, it yields output using a prefix showing the code numerically, e.g. “unk77”. This form is not recognized by `ttosa`.

The `srclen` parameter of `ttosa` specifies the length of the string pointed to by `src`; it is an error for there to be anything else (e.g., a terminating NUL) within that length. As a convenience for cases where an entire NUL-terminated string is to be converted, a `srclen` value of `0` is taken to mean strlen(src).

The `dstlen` parameter of `satot` specifies the size of the `dst` parameter; under no circumstances are more than `dstlen` bytes written to `dst`. A result that will not fit is truncated. Dstlen can be zero, in which case `dst` need not be valid and no result is written, but the return value is unaffected; in all other cases, the (possibly truncated) result is NUL-terminated. The <libreswan.h> header file defines a constant, SATOT_BUF, which is the size of a buffer just large enough for worst-case results.

The `format` parameter of `satot` specifies what format is to be used for the conversion. The value `0` (not the ASCII character '0', but a zero value) specifies a reasonable default (currently lowercase protocol prefix, lowercase hexadecimal SPI, dotted-decimal or colon-hex address). The value 'f' is similar except that the SPI is padded with `0`s to a fixed 32-bit width, to ease aligning displayed tables.

Ttosa returns NULL for success and a pointer to a string-literal error message for failure; see DIAGNOSTICS. Satot returns `0` for a failure, and otherwise always returns the size of buffer that would be needed to accommodate the full conversion result, including terminating NUL; it is the caller's responsibility to check this against the size of the provided buffer to determine whether truncation has occurred.

There is also, temporarily, support for some obsolete forms of SA specifier that lack the address-family indicator.

## SEE ALSO

ipsec_ttoul 3, ipsec_ttoaddr 3, ipsec_samesaid 3, inet 3

## DIAGNOSTICS

Fatal errors in `ttosa` are: empty input; input too small to be a legal SA specifier; no @ in input; unknown protocol prefix; conversion error in ttoul or ttoaddr.

Fatal errors in `satot` are: unknown format.

## HISTORY

Written for the FreeS/WAN project by Henry Spencer.

## BUGS

The restriction of text-to-binary error reports to literal strings (so that callers don't need to worry about freeing them or copying them) does limit the precision of error reporting.

The text-to-binary error-reporting convention lends itself to slightly obscure code, because many readers will not think of NULL as signifying success. A good way to make it clearer is to write something like:

    const char *error;

    error = ttosa( /* ... */ );
    if (error != NULL) {
            /* something went wrong */