Get wifi BSSID programmatically using Ruby and ioctl - ruby

Question

Using Getting essid via ioctl in ruby as a template I wanted to get the BSSID rather than the ESSID. However, not being a C developer, there are a few things that I don't understand.
What I have so far which does not work :( ...
NOTE I'm a bit confused because part of me thinks, according to some comments in wireless.h, that the BSSID can only be set via ioctl. However, the ioctl to get exists. That along with my almost complete lack of understanding of the more intermediate C type isms (structs, unions, and stuff ;) ), I simply don't know.
def _get_bssid(interface)
# Copied from wireless.h
# supposing a 16 byte address and 32 byte buffer but I'm totally
# guessing here.
iwreq = [interface, '' * 48,0].pack('a*pI')
sock = Socket.new(Socket::AF_INET, Socket::SOCK_DGRAM, 0)
# from wireless.h
# SIOCGIWAP 0x8B15 /* get access point MAC addresses */
sock.ioctl('0x8B15', iwreq) # always get an error: Can't convert string to Integer
puts iwreq.inspect
end
So, in the meantime, I'm using a wpa_cli method for grabbing the BSSID but I'd prefer to use IOCTL:
def _wpa_status(interface)
wpa_data = nil
unless interface.nil?
# need to write a method to get the src_sock_path
# programmatically. Fortunately, for me
# this is going to be the correct sock path 99% of the time.
# Ideas to get programmatically would be:
# parse wpa_supplicant.conf
# check process table | grep wpa_suppl | parse arguments
src_sock_path = '/var/run/wpa_supplicant/' + interface
else
return nil
end
client_sock_path = '/var/run/hwinfo_wpa'
# open Domain socket
socket = Socket.new(Socket::AF_UNIX, Socket::SOCK_DGRAM, 0)
begin
# bind client domain socket
socket.bind(Socket.pack_sockaddr_un(client_sock_path))
# connect to server with our client socket
socket.connect(Socket.pack_sockaddr_un(src_sock_path))
# send STATUS command
socket.send('STATUS', 0)
# receive 1024 bytes (totally arbitrary value)
# split lines by \n
# store in variable wpa_data.
wpa_data = socket.recv(1024)
rescue => e
$stderr.puts 'WARN: unable to gather wpa data: ' + e.inspect
end
# close or next time we attempt to read it will fail.
socket.close
begin
# remove the domain socket file for the client
File.unlink(client_sock_path)
rescue => e
$stderr.puts 'WARN: ' + e.inspect
end
unless wpa_data.nil?
#wifis = Hash[wpa_data.split(/\n/).map\
{|line|
# first, split into pairs delimited by '='
key,value = line.split('=')
# if key is camel-humped then put space in front
# of capped letter
if key =~ /[a-z][A-Z]/
key.gsub!(/([a-z])([A-Z])/,'\\1_\\2')
end
# if key is "id" then rename it.
key.eql?('id') && key = 'wpa_id'
# fix key so that it can be used as a table name
# by replacing spaces with underscores
key.gsub!(' ','_')
# lower case it.
key.downcase!
[key,value]
}]
end
end
EDIT:
So far nobody has been able to answer this question. I think I'm liking the wpa method better anyway because I'm getting more data from it. That said, one call-out I'd like to make is if anyone uses the wpa code, be aware that it will require escalated privileges to read the wlan socket.
EDIT^2 (full code snippet):
Thanks to #dasup I've been able to re-factor my class to correctly pull the bssid and essids using system ioctls. (YMMV given the implementation, age, and any other possible destabilization thing to your Linux distribution - the following code snippet works with the 3.2 and 3.7 kernels though.)
require 'socket'
class Wpa
attr_accessor :essid, :bssid, :if
def initialize(interface)
#if = interface
puts 'essid: ' + _get_essid.inspect
puts 'bssid: ' + _get_bssid.inspect
end
def _get_essid
# Copied from wireless.h
iwreq = [#if, " " * 32, 32, 0 ].pack('a16pII')
sock = Socket.new(Socket::AF_INET, Socket::SOCK_DGRAM, 0)
sock.ioctl(0x8B1B, iwreq)
#essid = iwreq.unpack('#16p').pop.strip
end
def _get_bssid
# Copied from wireless.h
# supposing a 16 byte address and 32 byte buffer but I'm totally
# guessing here.
iwreq = [#if, "\0" * 32].pack('a16a32')
sock = Socket.new(Socket::AF_INET, Socket::SOCK_DGRAM, 0)
# from wireless.h
# SIOCGIWAP 0x8B15 /* get access point MAC addresses */
sock.ioctl(0x8B15, iwreq) # always get an error: Can't convert string to Integer
#bssid = iwreq.unpack('#18H2H2H2H2H2H2').join(':')
end
end
h = Wpa.new('wlan0')

Answer 1

I'm not very much familiar with Ruby, but I spotted two mistakes:
The hex number for SIOCGIWAP should be given without quotes/ticks.
The initialization of the data buffer ends up with some trailing bytes after the interface name (debugged using gdb). The initialization given below works.
Be aware that your code will break if any of the data structures or constants change (IFNAMSIZ, sa_family, struct sockaddr etc.) However, I don't think that such changes are likely anytime soon.
require 'socket'
def _get_bssid(interface)
# Copied from wireless.h
# supposing a 16 byte address and 32 byte buffer but I'm totally
# guessing here.
iwreq = [interface, "\0" * 32].pack('a16a32')
sock = Socket.new(Socket::AF_INET, Socket::SOCK_DGRAM, 0)
# from wireless.h
# SIOCGIWAP 0x8B15 /* get access point MAC addresses */
sock.ioctl(0x8B15, iwreq) # always get an error: Can't convert string to Integer
puts iwreq.inspect
end
You'll get back an array/buffer with:
The interface name you sent, padded with 0x00 bytes to a total length of 16 bytes.
Followed by a struct sockaddr, i.e. a two-byte identifier 0x01 0x00 (coming from ARPHRD_ETHER?) followed by the BSSID padded with 0x00 bytes to a total length of 14 bytes.
Good luck!