why can't i bind ipv6 socket to a linklocal address
c, ipv6, sockets
Solution
For link-local addresses, you also need to specify the scope ID of the network interface that is associated with the address... something like this:
server.sin6_scope_id = 5; /* or whatever the scope ID is for the network interface you want to communicate over */
You can use getifaddrs() to find the various scope IDs available on your systems, and the network interfaces they correspond to.
(Yes, it's a pain... alternatively you might be able to append something like "%en0" to the end of the string you pass to inet_pton(), and inet_pton() might do the work for you... I'm not sure if inet_pton() handles that syntax or not)
Problem
``` #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/socket.h> #include <netinet/in.h> #include <netdb.h> #include <stdio.h> void error(char *msg) { perror(msg); exit(0); } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { int sock, length, fromlen, n; struct sockaddr_in6 server; struct sockaddr_in6 from; int portNr = 5555; char buf[1024]; length = sizeof (struct sockaddr_in6); sock=socket(AF_INET6, SOCK_DGRAM, 0); if (sock < 0) error("Opening socket"); bzero((char *)&server, length); server.sin6_family=AF_INET6; server.sin6_addr=in6addr_any; server.sin6_port=htons(portNr); inet_pton( AF_INET6, "fe80::21f:29ff:feed:2f7e", (void *)&server.sin6_addr.s6_addr); //inet_pton( AF_INET6, "::1", (void *)&server.sin6_addr.s6_addr); if (bind(sock,(struct sockaddr *)&server,length)<0) error("binding"); fromlen = sizeof(struct sockaddr_in6); while (1) { n = recvfrom(sock,buf,1024,0,(struct sockaddr *)&from,&fromlen); if (n < 0) error("recvfrom"); write(1,"Received a datagram: ",21); write(1,buf,n); n = sendto(sock,"Got your message\n",17, 0,(struct sockaddr *)&from,fromlen); if (n < 0) error("sendto"); } } ``` when I compile and run the above code I got : ``` binding: Invalid argument ``` and if change to bind the `::1` and leave other thing unchanged in the source code, the code works! so could you tell me what's wrong with my code ? thanks in advance.