Develop Reference

Python sockets google dns server

I need my own IP in a small script and in order not to hardcode it, I`ve found a piece of code from here(stackoverflow) that works.
This--
with socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM) as s:
s.connect(("8.8.8.8", 80))
print(s.getsockname()[0])
--
What is not clear for me is why it only works on UDP and not TCP? It has something to do with the google dns server? Thanks in advance.

This has nothing to do with Google and nothing to do with DNS.
All what this code does is to "connect" a UDP socket to an external IP, so that the OS kernel figures out which local IP address it needs to use in order to reach this external system. This is no real connection, i.e. there is no traffic involved but the OS kernel is only checking routing tables and local interfaces in order to decide which IP address to use as source in case one would actually use the socket to send data.
One could do the same with TCP. But in this case a real TCP connection would be established which means that actual traffic would be exchanged and that the connect would fail if the external system would not be reachable on this port (i.e. no listener, firewall in between etc).
With UDP instead connect will not produce any traffic and would fail only if no route to the destination IP address could be determined. This also means that an arbitrary external IP address and port could be used, i.e. ('1.1.1.1',11) would work the same as ('8.8.8.8',80).

How to determine outgoing port in Python through NAT

I'm working on something that sends data from one program over UDP to another program at a known IP and port. The program at the known IP and port receives the message from the originating IP but thanks to the NAT the port is obscured (to something like 30129). The program at the known IP and port wants to send an acknowledgement and/or info to the querying program. It can send it back to the original IP and the obscured port #. But how will the querying program know what port to monitor to get it back on? Or, is there a way (this is Python) to say "send this out over port 3200 to known IP (1.2.3.4) on port 7000? That way the known IP/port can respond to port 30129, but it'll get redirected to 3200, which the querying program knows to monitor. Any help appreciated. And no, TCP is not an option.

Okay, I figured it out - the trick is to use the same sock object to receive that you used to send. At least in initial experiments, that seems to do the trick. Thanks for your help.

The simple answer is you don't care what the "real" (ie: pre-natted) port is. Just reply to the nat query and allow the nat to handling delivering the result. If you ABSOLUTELY have to know the source UDP port, include the information in your UDP packet -- but I strongly recommend against this.

Is it possible to have a socket listening to two UDP IPs, one that is 127.0.0.1 (same machine) and a different computer at the same time?

An eye-tracking application I use utilizes UDP to send packets of data. I made a python socket on the same computer to listen and dump the data into a .txt file. I already have this much working.
A separate application also written in python (what the eye-tracked subject is seeing) is running on a separate computer. Because the eye-tracking application is continuous and sends unnecessary data, so far I've had to manually parse out the instances when the subject is looking at desired stimuli. I did this based on a manually synchronized start of both the stimuli and eye-tracking applications and then digging through the log file.
What I want to do is have the second computer act as a second UDP client, sending a packet of data to the socket on the eye-tracking computer everytime the subject is looking at stimuli (where a marker is inserted into the .txt file previously mentioned). Is it possible to have a socket listening to two IP addresses at one time?
Here's my socket script:
#GT Pocket client program
import datetime
import socket
now = datetime.datetime.now()
filename = 'C:\gazelog_' + now.strftime("%Y_%m_%d_%H_%M") + '.txt'
UDP_IP = '127.0.0.1' # The remote host (in this case our local computer)
UDP_PORT = 6666 # The same port as used by the GT server by default
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, #internet
socket.SOCK_DGRAM) #UDP
sock.bind( (UDP_IP, UDP_PORT) )
while True:
data, addr = sock.recvfrom( 1024) #I assume buffer size is 1024 bytes.
print "Received Message:", data
with open(filename, "a") as myfile:
myfile.write(str(data + "\n"))
sock.close()
myfile.close()
EDIT:
#abarnert I was able to bind to the host address on the Ethernet interface and send a message from computer B to computer A, but computer A was no long able to receive packets from itself. When I specified UDP_IP = '0.0.0.0' computer B was no longer able to send data across the Ethernet. When I specified UDP_IP = '' I received the `error: [Errno 10048] Only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted
This have to do with the script I used on the Computer B to send the data:
import socket
UDP_IP = "169.254.35.231" # this was the host address I was able to send through.
UDP_PORT = 6666
MESSAGE = "Start"
print ("UDP target IP:"), UDP_IP
print ("UDP target port:"), UDP_PORT
print ("message:"), MESSAGE
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,
socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
sock.sendto(MESSAGE, (UDP_IP, UDP_PORT) )
I didn't know where (or if at all) I needed to specify INADDR_ANY, so I didn't. But I did try once where import socket.INADDR_ANY but got ImportError: No module named INADDR_ANY
Seems like a simple issue based on your response, so I'm not sure where I'm messing up.
EDIT2: I just reread your answer again and understand why socket.INADDR_ANY doesn't work. Please disregard that part of my previous edit
EDIT3: Okay so the reason that I wasn't picking up data when specifying the host IP was that the application I was collecting data from on Computer A was still specified to send to 127.0.0.1. So I figured it out. I am still curious why 0.0.0.0 didn't work though!

No. A socket can only be bound to a single address at a time.*
If there happens to be a single address that handles both things you want, you can use a single socket to listen to it. In this case, the INADDR_ANY host (0.0.0.0) may be exactly what you're looking for—that will handle any (IPv4) connections on all interfaces, both loopback and otherwise. And even if there is no pre-existing address that does what you want, you may be able to set one up via, e.g., an ipfilter-type interface.
But otherwise, you have to create two sockets. Which means you need to either multiplex with something like select, or create two threads.
In your case, you want to specify a host that can listen to both the local machine, and another machine on the same Ethernet network. You could get your host address on the Ethernet interface and bind that. (Your machine can talk to itself on any of its interfaces.) Usually, getting your address on "whatever interface is the default" works for this too—you'll see code that binds to socket.gethostname() in some places, like the Python Socket Programming HOWTO. But binding to INADDR_ANY is a lot simpler. Unless you want to make sure that machines on certain interfaces can't reach you (which is usually only a problem if you're, e.g., building a server intended to live on a firewall's DMZ), you'll usually want to use INADDR_ANY.
Finally, how do you bind to INADDR_ANY? The short answer is: just use UDP_IP = '', or UDP_IP = '0.0.0.0' if you want to be more explicit. Anyone who understands sockets, even if they don't know any Python, will understand what '0.0.0.0' means in server code.(You may wonder why Python doesn't have a constant for this in the socket module, especially when even lower-level languages like C do. The answer is that it does, but it's not really usable.**)
* Note that being bound to a single address doesn't mean you can only receive packets from a single address; it means you can receive packets from all networks where that single address is reachable. For example, if your machine has a LAN connection, where your address is 10.0.0.100, and a WAN connection, where your address is 8.9.10.11, if you bind 10.0.0.100, you can receive packets from other LAN clients like 10.0.0.201 and 10.0.0.202. But you can't receive packets from WAN clients like 9.10.11.12 as 10.0.0.100.
** In the low-level sockets API, dotted-string addresses like '0.0.0.0' are converted to 32-bit integers like 0. Python sometimes represents those integers as ints, and sometimes as 4-byte buffers like b'\0\0\0\0'. Depending on your platform and version, the socket.INADDR_ANY constant can be either 0 or b'\0\0\0\0'. The bind method will not take 0, and may not take b'\0\0\0\0'. And you can't convert to '0.0.0.0' without first checking which form you have, then calling the right functions on it. This is ugly. That's why it's easier to just use '0.0.0.0'.

I believe you can bind a raw socket to an entire interface, but you appear to be using two different interfaces.
It's probably best to use two sockets with select().

SocketServer doesn't work on Linux

I wrote a simple python script using the SocketServer, it works well on Windows, but when I execute it on a remote Linux machine(Ubuntu), it doesn't work at all..
The script is like below:
#-*-coding:utf-8-*-
import SocketServer
class MyHandler(SocketServer.BaseRequestHandler):
def handle(self):
data_rcv = self.request.recv(1024).strip()
print data_rcv
myServer = SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer(('127.0.0.1', 7777), MyHandler)
myServer.serve_forever()
I upload it to the remote machine by SSH, and then run the command python server.py on the remote machine, and try to access to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:7777/test with my browser, but nothing is printed on the remote machine's teminal...any ideas?
UPDATE: Problem solved, it's a firewall issue, thanks you all.

You are binding the server to 127.0.0.1, the IP address for localhost. This means the server will only accept connections originating from the same machine; it won't recognize ones coming from another machine.
You need to either bind to your external IP address, or bind to a wildcard address (i.e. don't bind to any particular IP address, just a port). Try:
myServer = SocketServer.ThreadingTCPServer(('0.0.0.0', 7777), MyHandler)

You are binding to 127.0.0.1:7777 but then trying to access it through the servers external IP (I'll use your placeholder - xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx). 127.0.0.1:7777 and xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:7777 are different ports and can be bound by different processes IIRC.
If that doesn't fix it, check your firewall, many hosts set up firewalls that block everything but the handful you are likely to use

Try with telnet or nc first, telnet to your public ip with your port and see what response you get. Also, why are accessing /test from the browser? I don't see that part in the code. I hope you have taken care of that.

UDP packages appear in wireshark, but are not received by program

I am trying to read UDP packages sent by an FPGA with my computer. They are sent
to port 21844 and to the IP 192.168.1.2 (which is my computer's IP). I can see the package in wireshark, they have no errors. When I run however this little python script, then only a very very small fraction of all packages are received by it, also depending if wireshark is running or not.
import socket
import sys
HOST, PORT = "192.168.1.2", 21844
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
sock.bind((HOST,PORT))
received ,address= sock.recvfrom(2048)
print address
I use windows 7 with Norton Internet Security, where I allow all traffic in the firewall for the FPGA IP and also for python. The same program on a Windows XP computer does not receive anything either...
Thanks for any help!

The TCP/IP stack of your OS doesn't hold those packets for you for eternity. Your script looks like something that very much depends on when it is run. Try to recvfrom in a loop, and run the script in the background. Then, start sending packets from your FPGA.
For extra convenience, explore the SocketServer module from Python's stdlib.

Ok, I found the problem: The UDP checksum in the FPGA was computed wrongly. Wireshark shows every package, but by default it does not check if the checksum is correct. When I set the checksum to 0x0000, then the packages arrive in python! Thanks for your help again!