What is dabba?

dabba is a set of network tools written for Linux.

This is inspired on the Dabba Walla system present in Mumbai where meals are regrouped and dispatched throughout the city with a high efficiency rate, every day of the year.

The project has 4 main components:

• libdabba - low-level zero-copy network library
• libdabba-rpc - protobuf-based rpc library for dabbad and dabba
• dabbad - multi-threaded task manager and RPC query processor
• dabba - CLI 'à la git' to communicate with dabbad and submit tasks

Currently supported feature are listed in the CODING file.

Get the source!

git clone git://github.com/eroullit/dabba.git

Contributions are welcome, CODING regroups all information about it.

Prerequisites

dabba needs these to compile and run properly:

• Linux kernel >= 2.6.31
• build-essential
• cmake
• pthread
• libnl-3-dev
• libnl-genl-3-dev
• libnl-route-3-dev
• protobuf-c-compiler
• libprotobuf-c0-dev
• setcap (within libcap2-bin package)

Recommended optional packages:

• python-yaml
• doxygen

Installation

To build out-of-tree:

$ mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make

To install it after being built:

$ sudo make install/strip

Capabilities

To configure dabba to run with a regular user account:

$ sudo make setcap

Testing

Automatic tests are available. There are two kinds:

• Read-only (which do not interfere with network interface settings)
• Read-write (which modify network interface settings)

WARNING: Read-write tests might degrade or disable the interface connectivity while tests are running. Avoid to run then on production interfaces.

To run read-only automatic tests, make sure proper capabilities are granted and run in the build directory:

$ ctest --output-on-failure

To run read-only automatic tests, make sure proper capabilities are granted, set the TEST_DEV variable with the interface name to modify and run in the build directory:

$ TEST_DEV=eth0 ctest --output-on-failure

Getting started!

Start dabbad:

$ dabbad --daemonize

As long as dabbad is running, captures tasks can be submitted:

$ dabba capture start --interface eth0 --pcap /tmp/example.pcap

Running captures can be listed in YAML format:

$ dabba capture get
---
  captures:
    - id: 3076324160
      rc: 0 # Success
      packet mmap size: 32768
      frame number: 16
      pcap: /tmp/example.pcap
      interface: eth0

Stopping the capture:

$ dabba capture stop --id 3076324160

Copyright

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2013 Emmanuel Roullit

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Contact

For questions: Send me a message to @eroullit on GitHub

For suggestions or bug reports: Feel free to open an issue on the ticket system.