Debugging libnl

If you are using libnl the easiest way to debug netlink messages is using the build-in debugging capabilities.

NLDBG=4 ./myprog

see here for complete reference of debug levels

using NLMON

Since kernel version 3.11 there is support for generic netlink message monitoring available. To check if your current kernel configuration supports netlink monitoring you can use

zgrep CONFIG_NLMON /proc/config.gz

To use nlmon one has to load the module if necessay, and add a new interface

modprobe nlmon

ip link add type nlmon
ip link set nlmon0 up

Now you can use wireshark, tcpdump, or any other network-sniffer to analyze netlink messages.