LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol) is an industry standard protocol designed to supplant proprietary Link-Layer protocols such as Extreme's EDP (Extreme Discovery Protocol) and CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol). The goal of LLDP is to provide an inter-vendor compatible mechanism to deliver Link-Layer notifications to adjacent network devices.
lldpd implements both reception and sending. It also implements an SNMP subagent for net-snmp to get local and remote LLDP information. The LLDP-MIB is partially implemented but the most useful tables are here. lldpd also partially implements LLDP-MED.
lldpd supports bridge, vlan and bonding.
The following OS are supported:
- FreeBSD
- GNU/Linux
- macOS
- NetBSD
- OpenBSD
- Solaris
Windows is not supported but you can use WinLLDPService as a transmit-only agent.
For general instructions prefer the website, including building from released tarballs.
To compile lldpd from Git, use the following commands:
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make installlldpd uses privilege separation to increase its security. Two
processes, one running as root and doing minimal stuff and the other
running as an unprivileged user into a chroot doing most of the stuff,
are cooperating. You need to create a user called _lldpd in a group
_lldpd (this can be change with ./configure). You also need to
create an empty directory /usr/local/var/run/lldpd (it needs to be
owned by root, not _lldpd!). If you get fuzzy timestamps from
syslog, copy /etc/locatime into the chroot.
lldpcli lets one query information collected through the command
line. If you don't want to run it as root, just install it setuid or
setgid _lldpd.
You can use Docker to run lldpd:
docker run --rm --net=host --uts=host \
-v /etc/os-release:/etc/os-release \
--cap-add=NET_RAW --cap-add=NET_ADMIN \
--name lldpd \
ghcr.io/lldpd/lldpd:latestIn place of latest which provides you with the latest stable
version, you may use 1, 1.0, 1.0.12 to match specific versions,
or master to get the development version.
To execute lldpcli, use:
docker exec lldpd lldpcli show neighborsOr to get the command-line:
docker exec -it lldpd lldpcliThe same procedure as above applies for macOS. However, there are simpler alternatives:
- Use Homebrew:
brew install lldpd
# Or, for the latest version:
brew install https://raw.github.com/lldpd/lldpd/master/osx/lldpd.rb- Build an macOS installer package which should work on the same version of macOS (it is important to use a separate build directory):
mkdir build && cd build
../configure --prefix=/usr/local --localstatedir=/var --sysconfdir=/private/etc --with-embedded-libevent \
--without-snmp
make -C osx pkgIf you want to compile for an older version of OS X, you need commands like:
mkdir build && cd build
../configure --prefix=/usr/local --localstatedir=/var --sysconfdir=/private/etc --with-embedded-libevent \
--without-snmp \
CFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=11.1" \
LDFLAGS="-mmacosx-version-min=11.1"
make -C osx pkgYou can check with otool -l that you got what you expected in
term of supported versions. If you are running on ARM64, you can
configure a binary supporting both architectures by adding
ARCHS="arm64 x86_64" to the arguments of the make command.
If you don't follow the above procedures, you will have to create the
user/group _lldpd. Have a look at how this is done in
osx/scripts/postinstall.
-
Don't clone the repo or download the master branch from GitHub. Instead, download the official release from the website https://lldpd.github.io/. Unpack into a working directory.
-
Download the Android NDK (version 22 or later). Unpack into a working directory next to the
lldpddirectory. -
Install
automake,libtool, andpkg-config. (sudo apt-get install automake libtool pkg-config) -
In the root of the
lldpddirectory, make acompile.shfile containing this script:
export TOOLCHAIN=$PWD/android-ndk/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64
export TARGET=armv7a-linux-androideabi
export API=30
# DO NOT TOUCH BELOW
export AR=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/llvm-ar
export CC=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/$TARGET$API-clang
export CXX=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/$TARGET$API-clang++
export LD=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/ld
export RANLIB=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/llvm-ranlib
export STRIP=$TOOLCHAIN/bin/llvm-strip
export AS=$CC
./autogen.sh
mkdir -p build && cd build
../configure \
--host=$TARGET \
--with-sysroot=$TOOLCHAIN/sysroot \
--prefix=/system \
--sbindir=/system/bin \
--runstatedir=/data/data/lldpd \
--with-privsep-user=root \
--with-privsep-group=root \
PKG_CONFIG=/bin/false
make
make install DESTDIR=$PWD/install- In the Android NDK directory, locate the
toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64directory and change theTOOLCHAINvariable of the above script to match the path where thelinux-x86_64directory resides.
export TOOLCHAIN=$PWD/android-ndk-r22b-linux-x86_64/android-ndk-r22b/toolchains/llvm/prebuilt/linux-x86_64- Determine the CPU architecture target (
adb shell getprop ro.product.cpu.abi). Change theTARGETvariable in the above script to match the target architecture. The target name will not exactly match the output of theadbcommand as there will be a trailing suffix to the target name, so look in thelinux-x86_64/bindirectory for theclangfile that starts with the CPU architecture target. Don't include the API version in the target name.
$ adb shell getprop ro.product.cpu.abi
armeabi-v7alinux-x86_64/bin$ ls *-clang
aarch64-linux-android21-clang armv7a-linux-androideabi23-clang i686-linux-android26-clang
aarch64-linux-android22-clang armv7a-linux-androideabi24-clang i686-linux-android27-clang
aarch64-linux-android23-clang armv7a-linux-androideabi26-clang i686-linux-android28-clang
aarch64-linux-android24-clang armv7a-linux-androideabi27-clang i686-linux-android29-clang
aarch64-linux-android26-clang armv7a-linux-androideabi28-clang i686-linux-android30-clang
aarch64-linux-android27-clang armv7a-linux-androideabi29-clang x86_64-linux-android21-clang
aarch64-linux-android28-clang armv7a-linux-androideabi30-clang x86_64-linux-android22-clang
aarch64-linux-android29-clang i686-linux-android16-clang x86_64-linux-android23-clang
aarch64-linux-android30-clang i686-linux-android17-clang x86_64-linux-android24-clang
armv7a-linux-androideabi16-clang i686-linux-android18-clang x86_64-linux-android26-clang
armv7a-linux-androideabi17-clang i686-linux-android19-clang x86_64-linux-android27-clang
armv7a-linux-androideabi18-clang i686-linux-android21-clang x86_64-linux-android28-clang
armv7a-linux-androideabi19-clang i686-linux-android22-clang x86_64-linux-android29-clang
armv7a-linux-androideabi21-clang i686-linux-android23-clang x86_64-linux-android30-clang
armv7a-linux-androideabi22-clang i686-linux-android24-clangexport TARGET=armv7a-linux-androideabi- Set the
APIvariable in the script above to your target API version. Check in the samelinux-x86_64/binto ensure the API you are targeting has a supportedclangfile for that CPU architecture and version. As of this writing, there is support for API21-30included for all architectures and some CPU architectures supported back to version16.
export API=30-
Run the compile script (
./compile.sh). -
Copy the
./bin/*and./lib/*.sofiles fromlldpd/build/install/systemto the target system (./bin/*to/system/bin,./lib/*.soto/system/lib64):
# Push files to target
cd build/install/system
adb shell mkdir -p /sdcard/Download/lldpd/bin
adb push bin/lldpcli /sdcard/Download/lldpd/bin/lldpcli
adb push bin/lldpd /sdcard/Download/lldpd/bin/lldpd
adb shell mkdir -p /sdcard/Download/lldpd/lib64
adb push lib/liblldpctl.so /sdcard/Download/lldpd/lib64/liblldpctl.so
# Enter target shell and move files
adb shell
# Run as root for all commands
su
# Make /system writeable
mount -o rw,remount /system
mv /sdcard/Download/lldpd/bin/lldpcli /system/bin/lldpcli
chmod 755 /system/bin/lldpcli
chown root:shell /system/bin/lldpcli
mv /sdcard/Download/lldpd/bin/lldpd /system/bin/lldpd
chmod 755 /system/bin/lldpd
chown root:shell /system/bin/lldpd
chmod 755 /system/bin/lldpctl
chown root:shell /system/bin/lldpctl
mv /sdcard/Download/lldpd/lib64/liblldpctl.so /system/lib64/liblldpctl.so
chmod 644 /system/lib64/liblldpctl.so
chown root:root /system/lib64/liblldpctl.so
# Make /system readonly again
mount -o ro,remount /system
# Might not be necessary on some systems
mkdir /data/data/lldpd
chmod 700 /data/data/lldpd
chown shell:shell /data/data/lldpd
# Clean up
rm -rf /sdcard/Download/lldpdlldpd also implements CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol), FDP (Foundry
Discovery Protocol), SONMP (Nortel Discovery Protocol) and EDP
(Extreme Discovery Protocol). However, recent versions of IOS should
support LLDP and most Extreme stuff support LLDP. When a EDP, CDP or
SONMP frame is received on a given interface, lldpd starts sending
EDP, CDP, FDP or SONMP frame on this interface. Informations collected
through EDP/CDP/FDP/SONMP are integrated with other informations and
can be queried with lldpcli or through SNMP.
More information:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_Layer_Discovery_Protocol
- http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.1AB-2005.pdf
- https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/wikis/LinkLayerDiscoveryProtocol
If you have a kernel older than Linux 4.0, you need to compile lldpd with
--enable-oldies to enable some compatibility functions: otherwise, lldpd will
only rely on Netlink to receive wireless, bridge, bond and VLAN information.
For bonding, you need 2.6.24 (in previous version, PACKET_ORIGDEV affected only non multicast packets). See:
- http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=80feaacb8a6400a9540a961b6743c69a5896b937
- http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=8032b46489e50ef8f3992159abd0349b5b8e476c
Otherwise, a packet received on a bond will be affected to all interfaces of the bond. In this case, lldpd will affect a received randomly to one of the interface (so a neighbor may be affected to the wrong interface).
On 2.6.27, we are able to receive packets on real interface for enslaved devices. This allows one to get neighbor information on active/backup bonds. Without the 2.6.27, lldpd won't receive any information on inactive slaves. Here are the patchs (thanks to Joe Eykholt):
- http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=0d7a3681232f545c6a59f77e60f7667673ef0e93
- http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=cc9bd5cebc0825e0fabc0186ab85806a0891104f
- http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=f982307f22db96201e41540295f24e8dcc10c78f
On FreeBSD, only a recent 9 kernel (9.1 or more recent) will allow to send LLDP frames on enslaved devices. See this bug report for more information:
Some devices (notably Cisco IOS) send frames tagged with the native
VLAN while they should send them untagged. If your network card does
not support accelerated VLAN, you will receive those frames as long as
the corresponding interface exists (see below). However, if your
network card handles VLAN encapsulation/decapsulation (check with
ethtool -k), you need a recent kernel to be able to receive those
frames without listening on all available VLAN. Starting from Linux
2.6.27, lldpd is able to capture VLAN frames when VLAN acceleration is
supported by the network card. Here is the patch:
On some other versions, frames are sent on VLAN 1. If this is not the native VLAN and if your network card support accelerated VLAN, you need to subscribe to this VLAN as well. The Linux kernel does not provide any interface for this. The easiest way is to create the VLAN for each port:
ip link add link eth0 name eth0.1 type vlan id 1
ip link set up dev eth0.1You can check both cases using tcpdump:
tcpdump -epni eth0 ether host 01:80:c2:00:00:0e
tcpdump -eni eth0 ether host 01:80:c2:00:00:0eIf the first command does not display received LLDP packets but the second one does, LLDP packets are likely encapsulated into a VLAN:
10:54:06.431154 f0:29:29:1d:7c:01 > 01:80:c2:00:00:0e, ethertype 802.1Q (0x8100), length 363: vlan 1, p 7, ethertype LLDP, LLDP, name SW-APP-D07.VTY, length 345
In this case, just create VLAN 1 will fix the situation. There are other solutions:
- Disable VLAN acceleration on the receive side (
ethtool -K eth0 rxvlan off) but this may or may not work. Check if there are similar properties that could apply withethtool -k eth0. - Put the interface in promiscuous mode with
ip link set promisc on dev eth0.
The last solution can be done directly by lldpd (on Linux only) by
using the option configure system interface promiscuous.
On modern networks, the performance impact should be nonexistent.
During development, you may want to execute lldpd at its current
location instead of doing make install. The correct way to do this is
to issue the following command:
sudo libtool execute src/daemon/lldpd -L $PWD/src/client/lldpcli -dYou can append any further arguments. If lldpd is unable to find
lldpcli it will start in an unconfigured mode and won't send or
accept LLDP frames.
There is a general test suite with make check. It's also possible to
run integration tests. They need pytest
and rely on Linux containers to be executed.
To enable code coverage, use:
../configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var \
--enable-sanitizers --enable-gcov --with-snmp \
CFLAGS="-O0 -g"
make
make check
# maybe, run integration tests
lcov --base-directory $PWD/src/lib \
--directory src --capture --output-file gcov.info
genhtml gcov.info --output-directory coverageWith libfuzzer
Using address sanitizer:
export CC=clang
export CFLAGS="-O1 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -gline-tables-only -fsanitize=address -fsanitize-address-use-after-scope -fsanitize=fuzzer-no-link"
export LIB_FUZZING_ENGINE="-fsanitize=fuzzer"Using undefined-behaviour sanitizer:
export CC=clang
export CFLAGS="-O1 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -gline-tables-only -fsanitize=array-bounds,bool,builtin,enum,float-divide-by-zero,function,integer-divide-by-zero,null,object-size,return,returns-nonnull-attribute,shift,signed-integer-overflow,unsigned-integer-overflow,unreachable,vla-bound,vptr -fno-sanitize-recover=array-bounds,bool,builtin,enum,float-divide-by-zero,function,integer-divide-by-zero,null,object-size,return,returns-nonnull-attribute,shift,signed-integer-overflow,unreachable,vla-bound,vptr -fsanitize=fuzzer-no-link"
export LIB_FUZZING_ENGINE="-fsanitize=fuzzer"Using memory sanitizer:
export CC=clang
export CFLAGS="-O1 -fno-omit-frame-pointer -gline-tables-only -fsanitize=memory -fsanitize-memory-track-origins -fsanitize=fuzzer-no-link"
export LIB_FUZZING_ENGINE="-fsanitize=fuzzer"Build and run:
./configure --disable-shared --enable-pie --enable-fuzzer=$LIB_FUZZING_ENGINE
make
cd tests/
./fuzz_cdp fuzzing_seed_corpus/fuzz_cdp_seed_corpus
./fuzz_edp fuzzing_seed_corpus/fuzz_edp_seed_corpus
./fuzz_lldp fuzzing_seed_corpus/fuzz_lldp_seed_corpus
./fuzz_sonmp fuzzing_seed_corpus/fuzz_sonmp_seed_corpusWith AFL++
You can use AFL++ to test some other aspects of lldpd. To test frame decoding:
export CC=afl-clang-fast
./configure --disable-shared --enable-pie
make clean check
cd tests
mkdir inputs
mv *.pcap inputs
afl-fuzz -i inputs -o outputs ./decode @@To embed lldpd into an existing system, there are two points of entry:
-
If your system does not use standard Linux interface, you can support additional interfaces by implementing the appropriate
struct lldpd_ops. You can look atsrc/daemon/interfaces-linux.cfor examples. Also, have a look atinterfaces_update()which is responsible for discovering and registering interfaces. -
lldpcliprovides a convenient way to querylldpd. It also comes with various outputs, including XML which allows one to parse its output for integration and automation purpose. Another way is to use SNMP support. A third way is to write your own controller usingliblldpctl.so. Its API is described insrc/lib/lldpctl.h. The custom binary protocol betweenliblldpctl.soandlldpdis not stable. Therefore, the library should always be shipped withlldpd. On the other hand, programs usingliblldpctl.socan rely on the classic ABI rules.
You can use tcpdump to capture the packets received and sent by
lldpd. To capture LLDPU, use:
tcpdump -s0 -vv -pni eth0 ether dst 01:80:c2:00:00:0eIntel X710 cards may handle LLDP themselves, intercepting any incoming
packets. If you don't see anything through tcpdump, check if you
have such a card (with lspci) and stop the embedded LLDP daemon:
for f in /sys/kernel/debug/i40e/*/command; do
echo lldp stop > $f
doneOn FreeBSD, use sysctl stop the embedded LLDP daemon:
for oid in $(sysctl -Nq dev.ixl | grep fw_lldp); do
sysctl $oid=0
doneThis may also apply to the ice (Intel E8xx cards) driver. These
steps are not necessary with a recent version of lldpd (1.0.11+ for
Linux, 1.0.19+ for FreeBSD).
lldpd is distributed under the ISC license:
Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
Also, lldpcli will be linked to GNU Readline (which is GPL licensed)
if available. To avoid this, use --without-readline as a configure
option.