The following client program trys to connect to a server and finds the current time and date on that server.
/* Start with the usual includes and declarations. */
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <netdb.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char *host;
int sockfd;
int len, result;
struct sockaddr_in address;
struct hostent *hostinfo;
struct servent *servinfo;
char buffer[128];
if(argc == 1)
host = "localhost";
else
host = argv[1];
/* Find the host address and report an error if none is found. */
hostinfo = gethostbyname(host);
if(!hostinfo) {
fprintf(stderr, "no host: %s\n", host);
exit(1);
}
/* Check that the daytime service exists on the host. */
servinfo = getservbyname("daytime", "tcp");
if(!servinfo) {
fprintf(stderr,"no daytime service\n");
exit(1);
}
printf("daytime port is %d\n", ntohs(servinfo -> s_port));
/* Create a socket. */
sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
/* Construct the address for use with connect... */
address.sin_family = AF_INET;
address.sin_port = servinfo -> s_port;
address.sin_addr = *(struct in_addr *)*hostinfo -> h_addr_list;
len = sizeof(address);
/* ...then connect and get the information. */
result = connect(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&address, len);
if(result == -1) {
perror("oops: getdate");
exit(1);
}
result = read(sockfd, buffer, sizeof(buffer));
buffer[result] = '\0';
printf("read %d bytes: %s", result, buffer);
close(sockfd);
exit(0);
}
Question:
We run the above program on a client machine, how the function getservbyname can get the server information without a reference to the server machine in the parameter list?
getservbyname
simply looks in /etc/services
to find the "daytime" service using the "tcp" protocol.
It's just a convenience, to save you from parsing that file.
Each of these protocols has a friendly name ("daytime", "http", etc) and a useful name (the port number - 13, 80 etc). /etc/services
holds this mapping, nothing more.