passt - Man Page

passt (Plug A Simple Socket Transport) provides full, quasi-native network connectivity to virtual machines in user-mode without requiring any capabilities or privileges.

The data plane implements a translation layer between a Layer-2 virtual network interface and native Layer-4 (TCP, UDP, ping) sockets on the host, giving the illusion that application processes residing on the guest are running on the local host, from a networking perspective.

Built-in ARP, DHCP, NDP, and DHCPv6 implementations are designed to provide the guest with a network configuration that tightly resembles the host native configuration. With the default options, guest and host share IP addresses, routes, and port bindings.

Port forwarding and translation allow networking services running in the guest to be reachable from both local and remote hosts.

Unlike slirp4netns(1), passt doesn't implement a full TCP stack: the TCP translation layer has no stateful data buffering and operates by reflecting one peer's observed parameters (congestion window size, acknowledged data, etc.) to the corresponding peer.

Currently, the only supported hypervisor is qemu(1), connecting to passt by means of a UNIX domain socket. This is supported starting from qemu 7.2. For older qemu versions, see the qrap(1) wrapper.

pasta (Pack A Subtle Tap Abstraction) provides equivalent functionality to network namespaces, as the one offered by passt for virtual machines.

If PID or --netns are given, pasta associates to an existing user and network namespace. Otherwise, pasta creates a new user and network namespace, and spawns the given command or a default shell within this context. A tap device within the network namespace is created to provide network connectivity.

For local TCP and UDP traffic only, pasta also implements a bypass path directly mapping Layer-4 sockets between init and target namespaces, for performance reasons.

-s,  --socket path

Path for UNIX domain socket used by qemu(1) or qrap(1) to connect to passt. Default is to probe a free socket, not accepting connections, starting from /tmp/passt_1.socket to /tmp/passt_64.socket.

-F,  --fd FD

Pass a pre-opened, connected socket to passt. Usually the socket is opened in the parent process and passt inherits it when run as a child. This allows the parent process to open sockets using another address family or requiring special privileges.

This option implies the behaviour described for --one-off, once this socket is closed.

-1,  --one-off

Quit after handling a single client connection, that is, once the client closes the socket, or once we get a socket error.

-t,  --tcp-ports spec

Configure TCP port forwarding to guest. spec can be one of:

none

Don't forward any ports

all

Forward all unbound, non-ephemeral ports, as permitted by current capabilities. For low (< 1024) ports, see Notes. No failures are reported for unavailable ports, unless no ports could be forwarded at all.

ports

A comma-separated list of ports, optionally ranged with -, and, optionally, with target ports after :, if they differ. Specific addresses can be bound as well, separated by /, and also, since Linux 5.7, limited to specific interfaces, prefixed by %. Within given ranges, selected ports and ranges can be excluded by an additional specification prefixed by ~.

Specifying excluded ranges only implies that all other ports are forwarded. In this case, no failures are reported for unavailable ports, unless no ports could be forwarded at all.

Examples:

-t 22

Forward local port 22 to port 22 on the guest

-t 22:23

Forward local port 22 to port 23 on the guest

-t 22,25

Forward local ports 22 and 25 to ports 22 and 25 on the guest

-t 22-80

Forward local ports between 22 and 80 to corresponding ports on the guest

-t 22-80:32-90

Forward local ports between 22 and 80 to ports between 32 and 90 on the guest

-t 192.0.2.1/22

Forward local port 22, bound to 192.0.2.1, to port 22 on the guest

-t 192.0.2.1%eth0/22

Forward local port 22, bound to 192.0.2.1 and interface eth0, to port 22

-t %eth0/22

Forward local port 22, bound to any address on interface eth0, to port 22

-t 2000-5000,~3000-3010

Forward local ports between 2000 and 5000, except for those between 3000 and 3010

-t 192.0.2.1/20-30,~25

For the local address 192.0.2.1, forward ports between 20 and 24 and between 26 and 30

-t ~20000-20010

Forward all ports to the guest, except for the range from 20000 to 20010

Default is none.

-u,  --udp-ports spec

Configure UDP port forwarding to guest. spec is as described for TCP above.

Note: unless overridden, UDP ports with numbers corresponding to forwarded TCP port numbers are forwarded too, without, however, any port translation. IPv6 bound ports are also forwarded for IPv4.

Default is none.

-I, --ns-ifname name

Name of tap interface to be created in target namespace. By default, the same interface name as the external, routable interface is used.

-t, --tcp-ports spec

Configure TCP port forwarding to namespace. spec can be one of:

none

Don't forward any ports

auto

Dynamically forward ports bound in the namespace. The list of ports is periodically derived (every second) from listening sockets reported by /proc/net/tcp and /proc/net/tcp6, see proc(5).

ports

A comma-separated list of ports, optionally ranged with -, and, optionally, with target ports after :, if they differ. Specific addresses can be bound as well, separated by /, and also, since Linux 5.7, limited to specific interfaces, prefixed by %. Within given ranges, selected ports and ranges can be excluded by an additional specification prefixed by ~.

Specifying excluded ranges only implies that all other ports are forwarded. In this case, no failures are reported for unavailable ports, unless no ports could be forwarded at all.

Examples:

-t 22

Forward local port 22 to 22 in the target namespace

-t 22:23

Forward local port 22 to port 23 in the target namespace

-t 22,25

Forward local ports 22 and 25 to ports 22 and 25 in the target namespace

-t 22-80

Forward local ports between 22 and 80 to corresponding ports in the target namespace

-t 22-80:32-90

Forward local ports between 22 and 80 to ports between 32 and 90 in the target namespace

-t 192.0.2.1/22

Forward local port 22, bound to 192.0.2.1, to port 22 in the target namespace

-t 192.0.2.1%eth0/22

Forward local port 22, bound to 192.0.2.1 and interface eth0, to port 22

-t %eth0/22

Forward local port 22, bound to any address on interface eth0, to port 22

-t 2000-5000,~3000-3010

Forward local ports between 2000 and 5000, except for those between 3000 and 3010

-t 192.0.2.1/20-30,~25

For the local address 192.0.2.1, forward ports between 20 and 24 and between 26 and 30

-t ~20000-20010

Forward all ports to the namespace, except for those between 20000 and 20010

IPv6 bound ports are also forwarded for IPv4.

Default is auto.

-u, --udp-ports spec

Configure UDP port forwarding to namespace. spec is as described for TCP above, and the list of ports is derived from listening sockets reported by /proc/net/udp and /proc/net/udp6, see proc(5).

Note: unless overridden, UDP ports with numbers corresponding to forwarded TCP port numbers are forwarded too, without, however, any port translation.

IPv6 bound ports are also forwarded for IPv4.

Default is auto.

-T, --tcp-ns spec

Configure TCP port forwarding from target namespace to init namespace. spec is as described above for TCP.

Default is auto.

-U, --udp-ns spec

Configure UDP port forwarding from target namespace to init namespace. spec is as described above for UDP.

Default is auto.

--userns spec

Target user namespace to join, as a path. If PID is given, without this option, the user namespace will be the one of the corresponding process.

--netns spec

Target network namespace to join, as a path or a name.  A name is treated as with ip-netns(8) as equivalent to a path in /run/netns.

This option can't be specified with a PID.

--netns-only

Join only a target network namespace, not a user namespace, and don't create one for sandboxing purposes either. This is implied if PATH or NAME are given without --userns.

--no-netns-quit

Do not exit once the target namespace reference is removed.

Without this option, pasta will terminate if the target network namespace is bound to the filesystem, and the given path is deleted, or if the target network namespace is represented by a procfs entry, and that entry is deleted, representing the fact that a process with the given PID terminated.

--config-net

Configure networking in the namespace: set up addresses and routes as configured or sourced from the host, and bring up the tap interface.

--no-copy-routes (DEPRECATED)

With --config-net, do not copy all the routes associated to the interface we derive addresses and routes from: set up only the default gateway. Implied by -g, --gateway, for the corresponding IP version only.

Default is to copy all the routing entries from the interface in the outer namespace to the target namespace, translating the output interface attribute to the outbound interface in the namespace.

Note that this configuration option is deprecated and will be removed in a future version. It is not expected to be of any use, and it simply reflects a legacy behaviour. If you have any use for this, refer to Reporting Bugs below.

--no-copy-addrs (DEPRECATED)

With --config-net, do not copy all the addresses associated to the interface we derive addresses and routes from: set up a single one. Implied by -a, --address, for the corresponding IP version only.

Default is to copy all the addresses, except for link-local ones, from the interface from the outer namespace to the target namespace.

Note that this configuration option is deprecated and will be removed in a future version. It is not expected to be of any use, and it simply reflects a legacy behaviour. If you have any use for this, refer to Reporting Bugs below.

--ns-mac-addr addr

Configure MAC address addr on the tap interface in the namespace.

Default is to let the tap driver build a pseudorandom hardware address.

Create and use a new, connected, user and network namespace

$ iperf3 -s -D
$ ./pasta
Outbound interface: eth0, namespace interface: eth0
ARP:
    address: 28:16:ad:39:a9:ea
DHCP:
    assign: 192.168.1.118
    mask: 255.255.255.0
    router: 192.168.1.1
NDP/DHCPv6:
    assign: 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b81d:fa4a:8cdd:cf17
    router: fe80::62e3:27ff:fe33:2b01
#
# dhclient -4 --no-pid
# dhclient -6 --no-pid
# ip address show
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65520 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 5e:90:02:eb:b0:2a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.118/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b81d:fa4a:8cdd:cf17/128 scope global 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:5c90:2ff:feeb:b02a/64 scope global dynamic mngtmpaddr 
       valid_lft 3591sec preferred_lft 3591sec
    inet6 fe80::5c90:2ff:feeb:b02a/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
# ip route show
default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0 
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.118 
# ip -6 route show
2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b81d:fa4a:8cdd:cf17 dev eth0 proto kernel metric 256 pref medium
2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001::/64 dev eth0 proto kernel metric 256 expires 3584sec pref medium
fe80::/64 dev eth0 proto kernel metric 256 pref medium
default via fe80::62e3:27ff:fe33:2b01 dev eth0 proto ra metric 1024 expires 3584sec pref medium
# iperf3 -c 127.0.0.1 -t1
Connecting to host 127.0.0.1, port 5201
[  5] local 127.0.0.1 port 51938 connected to 127.0.0.1 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  4.46 GBytes  38.3 Gbits/sec    0   3.93 MBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  4.46 GBytes  38.3 Gbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-1.41   sec  4.45 GBytes  27.1 Gbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.
# iperf3 -c ::1 -t1
Connecting to host ::1, port 5201
[  5] local ::1 port 50108 connected to ::1 port 5201
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr  Cwnd
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  4.35 GBytes  37.4 Gbits/sec    0   4.99 MBytes       
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate         Retr
[  5]   0.00-1.00   sec  4.35 GBytes  37.4 Gbits/sec    0             sender
[  5]   0.00-1.41   sec  4.35 GBytes  26.4 Gbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.
# ping -c1 -4 spaghetti.pizza
PING spaghetti.pizza (172.67.192.217) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.67.192.217: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=37.3 ms

--- spaghetti.pizza ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
# ping -c1 -6 spaghetti.pizza
PING spaghetti.pizza(2606:4700:3034::6815:147a (2606:4700:3034::6815:147a)) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2606:4700:3034::6815:147a: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=35.6 ms

--- spaghetti.pizza ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 35.605/35.605/35.605/0.000 ms
# logout
$

Connect an existing user and network namespace

$ unshare -rUn
# echo $$
2446678

$ ./pasta 2446678
Outbound interface: eth0, namespace interface: eth0
ARP:
    address: 28:16:ad:39:a9:ea
DHCP:
    assign: 192.168.1.118
    mask: 255.255.255.0
    router: 192.168.1.1
NDP/DHCPv6:
    assign: 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b81d:fa4a:8cdd:cf17
    router: fe80::62e3:27ff:fe33:2b01

# dhclient -4 --no-pid
# dhclient -6 --no-pid
# ip address show
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65520 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether fa:c1:2a:27:92:a9 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.118/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b81d:fa4a:8cdd:cf17/128 scope global 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:f8c1:2aff:fe27:92a9/64 scope global dynamic mngtmpaddr 
       valid_lft 3594sec preferred_lft 3594sec
    inet6 fe80::f8c1:2aff:fe27:92a9/64 scope link 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Start and connect a guest with basic port forwarding

$ ./passt -f -t 2222:22
Outbound interface: eth0
ARP:
    address: 28:16:ad:39:a9:ea
DHCP:
    assign: 192.168.1.118
    mask: 255.255.255.0
    router: 192.168.1.1
        search:
            redhat.com
NDP/DHCPv6:
    assign: 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b81d:fa4a:8cdd:cf17
    router: fe80::62e3:27ff:fe33:2b01
        search:
            redhat.com
UNIX domain socket bound at /tmp/passt_1.socket

You can now start qrap:
    ./qrap 5 qemu-system-x86_64 ... -net socket,fd=5 -net nic,model=virtio
or directly qemu, patched with:
    qemu/0001-net-Allow-also-UNIX-domain-sockets-to-be-used-as-net.patch
as follows:
    qemu-system-x86_64 ... -net socket,connect=/tmp/passt_1.socket -net nic,model=virtio

$ ./qrap 5 qemu-system-x86_64 test.qcow2 -m 1024 -display none -nodefaults -nographic -net socket,fd=5 -net nic,model=virtio
Connected to /tmp/passt_1.socket

passt: DHCP: ack to request
passt:     from 52:54:00:12:34:56
passt: NDP: received NS, sending NA
passt: NDP: received RS, sending RA
passt: DHCPv6: received SOLICIT, sending ADVERTISE
passt: NDP: received NS, sending NA
passt: DHCPv6: received REQUEST/RENEW/CONFIRM, sending REPLY
passt: NDP: received NS, sending NA

$ ssh -p 2222 root@localhost
root@localhost's password:

# ip address show
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: ens2: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65520 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 52:54:00:12:34:56 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.118/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global noprefixroute ens2
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b81d:fa4a:8cdd:cf17/128 scope global noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 2a02:6d40:3ca5:2001:b019:9ae2:a2fe:e6b4/64 scope global dynamic noprefixroute 
       valid_lft 3588sec preferred_lft 3588sec
    inet6 fe80::1f98:d09f:9309:9e77/64 scope link noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Both passt and pasta can bind on ports with a local address, depending on the configuration. Local destination or source addresses need to be changed before packets are delivered to the guest or target namespace: most operating systems would drop packets received from non-loopback interfaces with local addresses, and it would also be impossible for guest or target namespace to route answers back.

For convenience, and somewhat arbitrarily, the source address on these packets is translated to the address of the default IPv4 or IPv6 gateway (if any) -- this is known to be an existing, valid address on the same subnet.

Loopback destination addresses are instead translated to the observed external address of the guest or target namespace. For IPv6 packets, if usage of a link-local address by guest or namespace has ever been observed, and the original destination address is also a link-local address, the observed link-local address is used. Otherwise, the observed global address is used. For both IPv4 and IPv6, if no addresses have been seen yet, the configured addresses will be used instead.

For example, if passt or pasta receive a connection from 127.0.0.1, with destination 127.0.0.10, and the default IPv4 gateway is 192.0.2.1, while the last observed source address from guest or namespace is 192.0.2.2, this will be translated to a connection from 192.0.2.1 to 192.0.2.2.

Similarly, for traffic coming from guest or namespace, packets with destination address corresponding to the default gateway will have their destination address translated to a loopback address, if and only if a packet, in the opposite direction, with a loopback destination or source address, port-wise matching for UDP, or connection-wise for TCP, has been recently forwarded to guest or namespace. This behaviour can be disabled with --no-map-gw.

Depending on the configuration, pasta can bind to local ports in the init namespace, in the target namespace, or both, and forward connections and packets to corresponding ports in the other namespace.

To avoid unnecessary overhead, these connections and packets are not forwarded through the tap device connecting the namespaces: pasta creates a socket in the destination namespace, with matching Layer-4 protocol, and uses it to forward local data. For TCP, data is forwarded between the originating socket and the new socket using the splice(2) system call, and for UDP, a pair of recvmmsg(2) and sendmmsg(2) system calls deals with packet transfers.

This bypass only applies to local connections and traffic, because it's not possible to bind sockets to foreign addresses.

If the port forwarding configuration requires binding to ports with numbers lower than 1024, passt and pasta will try to bind to them, but will fail, unless, either:

• the sys.net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start sysctl is set to the number of the lowest port passt and pasta need. For example, as root:

  	sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_unprivileged_port_start=443

  Note: this is the recommended way of enabling passt and pasta to bind to ports with numbers below 1024.

• or the CAP_NET_BIND_SERVICE Linux capability is granted, see services(5) and capabilities(7).

  This is, in general, not the recommended way, because passt and pasta might be used as vector to effectively use this capability from another process.

  However, if your environment is sufficiently controlled by an LSM (Linux Security Module) such as AppArmor, SELinux, Smack or TOMOYO, and no other processes can interact in such a way in virtue of this, granting this capability to passt and pasta only can effectively prevent other processes from utilising it.

  Note that this will not work for automatic detection and forwarding of ports with pasta, because pasta will relinquish this capability at runtime.

  To grant this capability, you can issue, as root:

  	for p in $(which passt passt.avx2); do
  		setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' "${p}"
  	done

ICMP and ICMPv6 Echo requests coming from guest or target namespace are handled using so-called "ping" sockets, introduced in Linux 2.6.30. To preserve the original identifier (see RFC 792, page 14, for ICMP, and RFC 4443, section 4.1, for ICMPv6), passt and pasta try to bind these sockets using the observed source identifier as "port" -- that corresponds to Echo identifiers for "ping" sockets.

As bind(2) failures were seen with particularly restrictive SELinux policies, a fall-back mechanism maps different identifiers to different sockets, and identifiers in replies will be mapped back to the original identifier of the request. However, if bind(2) fails and the fall-back mechanism is used, echo requests will be forwarded with different, albeit unique, identifiers.

For ICMP and ICMPv6 Echo requests to work, the ping_group_range parameter needs to include the PID of passt or pasta, see icmp(7).

As pasta connects to an existing namespace, or once it creates a new namespace, it will also ensure that the loopback interface, lo, is brought up. This is needed to bind ports using the loopback address in the namespace.

To synchronise the TCP sending window from host Layer-4 sockets to the TCP parameters announced in TCP segments sent over the Layer-2 interface, passt and pasta routinely query the size of the sending window seen by the kernel on the corresponding socket using the TCP_INFO socket option, see tcp(7). Before Linux 5.3, i.e. before Linux kernel commit  8f7baad7f035 ("tcp: Add snd_wnd to TCP_INFO"), the sending window (snd_wnd field) is not available.

If the sending window cannot be queried, it will always be announced as the current sending buffer size to guest or target namespace. This might affect throughput of TCP connections.