ruvnet/RuView · error

ENOMEM

ENOMEM

Error message

veil: nl_socket_alloc failed\n

What it means

veil_shieldd is the OpenWrt nl80211 privacy daemon; `veil_nl_connect` begins by allocating a libnl socket handle with `nl_socket_alloc()`. A NULL return is mapped to `-ENOMEM`: the C heap is exhausted or the process hit a memory rlimit before the netlink channel even opens, so the daemon aborts bring-up at its first step.

Source

Thrown at firmware/privshield/openwrt/veil_shieldd.c:71

    struct nl_sock *sock;   /* generic-netlink socket to nl80211            */
    int             family; /* resolved "nl80211" genl family id           */
    int             ifindex;/* target AP interface (e.g. phy0-ap0)         */
    uint64_t        key;    /* shared session key for the keyed rotation    */
    size_t          passes; /* Givens passes                                */
    volatile sig_atomic_t running;
};

static struct veil_ctx g_ctx;

static void on_signal(int sig) { (void)sig; g_ctx.running = 0; }

/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */
/* nl80211 bring-up — all REAL libnl-genl-3 API names.                     */
/* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */
static int veil_nl_connect(struct veil_ctx *c) {
    c->sock = nl_socket_alloc();
    if (!c->sock) {
        fprintf(stderr, "veil: nl_socket_alloc failed\n");
        return -ENOMEM;
    }
    if (genl_connect(c->sock)) {
        fprintf(stderr, "veil: genl_connect failed\n");
        return -EIO;
    }
    c->family = genl_ctrl_resolve(c->sock, "nl80211");
    if (c->family < 0) {
        fprintf(stderr, "veil: genl_ctrl_resolve(nl80211) failed: %d\n",
                c->family);
        return c->family;
    }
    /* Observe MLME events (auth/assoc, and — where the driver forwards them —
     * action-frame notifications). Real multicast group name is "mlme". */
    int grp = genl_ctrl_resolve_grp(c->sock, "nl80211", "mlme");
    if (grp >= 0) {
        (void)nl_socket_add_membership(c->sock, grp);
    }

View on GitHub (pinned to 4685618388)

Solutions

1. Free memory or raise limits: stop unneeded services, raise the cgroup/`ulimit -v` cap, add zram/swap, then restart the daemon.
2. Check `dmesg` for the OOM killer selecting veil_shieldd; add memory headroom or respawn throttling under procd.
3. If it reproduces with ample free memory, verify runtime libnl matches the SDK: `ldd /usr/sbin/veil_shieldd | grep nl` and compare package versions.

Example fix

# before
veil_shieldd -i 2        # veil: nl_socket_alloc failed
# after
/etc/init.d/uhttpd stop   # free RAM on a 32MB target
opkg install zram-swap; /etc/init.d/veil_shieldd restart

/* headroom check before daemon start */
#include <sys/resource.h>
static int heap_headroom_ok(void) {
    struct rlimit rl;
    if (getrlimit(RLIMIT_AS, &rl) == 0 && rl.rlim_cur != RLIM_INFINITY
        && rl.rlim_cur < (32ull << 20)) return 0; /* < 32MB cap will likely fail */
    return 1;
}

if (veil_nl_connect(&g_ctx) != 0) {
    fprintf(stderr, "veil: nl80211 bring-up failed; freeing memory and retrying once\n");
    /* procd respawn with threshold; do not busy-loop */
    return 1;
}

When it happens

Trigger: Embedded router with 32-64 MB RAM under boot-time memory pressure; `ulimit -v` / cgroup memory caps on the daemon; a leaky supervisor restart loop; ABI-mismatched libnl3/libnl-genl3 returning garbage.

Common situations: Low-RAM OpenWrt targets running many services; OOM pressure from the wifi stack itself; chroot/proot environments intercepting allocation; SDK-built binary deployed against different libnl than linked.

Related errors

• ENOMEM
• ${path}: ${res.status} ${res.statusText}
• brain corpus exceeds 1 MiB
• EIO
• EIO

AI-assisted analysis of ruvnet/RuView@4685618388 (2026-08-16). Data as JSON: /api/errors/0c99129a223b0988. Report an issue: GitHub.