PIM-SM/SSM IPv6 Multicast Routing for UNIX
pim6sd is an IPv6 Protocol Independent Multicast routing daemon, which supports both Any-Source as well as Source-Specific Multicast, also known as PIM-SM and PIM-SSM.
pim6sd stems from pim6dd, which was originally based on pimd, which in turn was based on mrouted.
Note:
pim6sdcurrently requires a configuration file to start.
Troubleshooting
Having successfully built pim6sd (see below), starting it for the
first time might be confusing:
- What happened?
- Where to look for status?
- Why isn't it routing?
First of all, pim6sd is a UNIX daemon. By default it starts in the
background and only logs warnings and errors to syslog.
Second, you might want to start it in debug mode, with a reduced .conf
file. See the pim6sd.conf.sample and pim6sd.conf(5) man page for
help.
cp pim6sd.conf.sample pim6sd.conf
sudo pim6sd -f pim6sd.conf -n -d all
This starts pim6sd with the local pim6sd.conf in the foreground,
enabling all debug messages. When running in the foreground the debug
messages are shown (unthrottled) in the same terminal. Periodically the
state of interfaces and routing tables are shown in this debug log.
To see pim6sd status when running in the background, send SIGUSR1 to
the PID, it is saved in /var/run/pim6sd.pid when the daemon has
started successfully. The status is found in /var/run/pim6sd.dump.
You can also use the pim6stat script, which does all this for you.
The single most common problem when dealing with multicast routing is the TTL of the multicast to be routed. If the TTL is 1 the data will be dropped by the kernel -- this is not a problem of pim6sd.
Another problem, which perhaps is not as common, is systems with lots of
interfaces. The kernel multicast routing stack is (usually) limited to
MAX 32 "virtual" interfaces. These "VIFs" are enumerated by the daemon
at startup based on either the contents of the pim6sd.conf or querying
the kernel for available interfaces. Should you run into problems with
this, use the following construct in your .conf file to ensure multicast
routing is only enabled between your foo and bar interfaces:
default_phyint_status disable;
phyint foo enable;
phyint bar enable;
More helpful tips and information is available in the man pages:
- pim6sd(8)
- pim6sd.conf(5)
Build & Install
The configure script and Makefile supports de facto standard options
such as --prefix=PATH. E.g., to install pim6sd to /usr instead of
the default /usr/local, with /etc for .conf file(s) and /var for
PID and status dump files:
./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var
make
sudo make install-strip
Building from GIT
If you want to contribute, or simply just try out the latest but unreleased features, then you need to know a few things about the [GNU build system][buildsystem]:
configure.acand a per-directoryMakefile.amare key filesconfigureandMakefile.inare generated fromautogen.shMakefileis generated byconfigurescript
To build from GIT you first need to clone the repository and run the
autogen.sh script. This requires automake and autoconf to be
installed on your system.
git clone https://github.com/troglobit/pim6sd.git
cd pim6sd/
./autogen.sh
./configure && make
sudo make install-strip
GIT sources are a moving target and are not recommended for production systems, unless you know what you are doing!
Origin & References
This project was forked from mcast-tools to focus on pim6sd only.