Facility for comfortable network configuration and utilization

[Jakub Jermář]

Create a set of command line tools and libraries that would increase the comforts of using networking in HelenOS such as domain name resolution and manual/automatic network configuration.

Details

This is an umbrella project for implementing the following tickets that should make configuration and utilization of HelenOS networking more automatic and/or comfortable:

#189 DNS resolver
#190 DHCP client
#191 Tools for manual network configuration

The idea is that the user will be able to access this functionality from command line (e.g. dhclient eth0) or call a C library function (e.g. to perform domain name lookup).

What Gains and Benefits will this bring?

HelenOS has received networking support very recently. In its current form, there is no domain name resolution in HelenOS and the network interfaces are configured once from a static configuration file when net runs.

The ability to use domain names instead of plain IP addresses is a big usability leap forward and also an expected standard in todays operating systems. For future prospects and also for the use in simulators such as Qemu and VirtualBox, it is also good to be able to get the network configuration via DHCP. In any case, the user should be given a chance to modify the configuration manually using some sort of a utility.

Difficulty

The project is not very difficult technically, but the amount of requested features is not small either.

Required skills

A successful applicant should have a good knowledge of communicating using the UDP protocol and using the BSD sockets-like networking API. He or she should be strong in C and should be able to navigate in various RFC documents describing the DNS and DHCP protocols.

Documentation

• ​Networking and TCP/IP stack for HelenOS system
• ​Networking stack Reference Manual
• ​RFC 920 Domain Requirements
• ​RFC 1034 Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities
• ​RFC 1035 Domain Names - Implementation and Specification
• ​RFC 1123 Requirements for Internet Hosts—Application and Support
• ​RFC 2131 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

Possible mentors

HelenOS Core Team, Martin Decky