QETH networking with utun devices on macOS

[iblowmymind]

Hello,

Quick question here: Can hercules automatically create a utun device on macOS? I heard tuntaposx doesn't work with newer versions of macOS (and I'm not keen to install a kext anyway), but macOS provides utun devices for this use case. Can hercules create these devices? I've not been able to find much info on how to create them myself. I've tried ifname utun9 but Hercules can't create it. sudo ifconfig utun9 create fails with ifconfig: SIOCIFCREATE2: Invalid argument. My end goal is to configure a QETH network on macOS. I'm on macOS 15. I believe the info on the website is outdated also, as macOS doesn't use /dev/tun anymore.

[iblowmymind]

I just saw that a PR was created, however the source branch was sadly deleted and the PR closed itself.

[giskard2035]

macOSX uses the utun interface ...

I resurrected the old repository and you can lurk at it here
beware only tun devices, no tap support

https://codeberg.org/cronos/hyperion_utun.git

and if you look at the the PR you will find a link to the self expanding binaries
just tested... it works on sequoia 15.4

enrico

[iblowmymind]

https://codeberg.org/cronos/hyperion_utun.git

The link you posted seems to point to a 404.

[giskard2035]

try again, please, i fixed my user visibility

enrico

[iblowmymind]

awesome, thank you so much! will give it a shot.

Another note, by the way; I've tried setting up macOS bridge devices to see if that'd work and it does not. (Created bridge1 and pointed Hercules to it but writes to the device error out with these even though I run with sudo:

12:27:49 HHC00137E Error opening TUN/TAP device /dev/tun: No such file or directory
12:27:49 HHC00007I Previous message from function 'TUNTAP_CreateInterface' at tuntap.c(251)
12:27:49 HHC03996E 0:1501 QETH: bridge1: qeth_create_interface() at qeth.c(1139): TUNTAP_CreateInterface() failed, rc=2 (0x00000002): No such file or directory
12:27:49 HHC00007I Previous message from function 'qeth_errnum_msg' at qeth.c(958)
12:27:49 HHC03996E 0:1501 QETH: bridge1: osa_adapter_cmd() at qeth.c(1370): qeth_create_interface() failed, rc=-1 (0xFFFFFFFF): An unidentified error has occurred
12:27:49 HHC00007I Previous message from function 'qeth_errnum_msg' at qeth.c(958)
(...)
12:27:49 HHC02499I Hercules utility hercifc - Hercules Network Interface Configuration Program - version 4.8.0.0-SDL
12:27:49 HHC01414I (C) Copyright 1999-2025 by Roger Bowler, Jan Jaeger, and others
12:27:49 HHC01417I ** The SDL 4.x Hyperion version of Hercules **
12:27:49 HHC01415I Build date: Mar 27 2025 at 20:38:06
(...)
12:27:51 HHC00911E 0:1502 QETH: Error writing to device bridge1: 9 Bad file descriptor
12:27:51 HHC00007I Previous message from function 'write_packet' at qeth.c(2859)
12:28:11 HHC00911E 0:1502 QETH: Error writing to device bridge1: 9 Bad file descriptor
12:28:11 HHC00007I Previous message from function 'write_packet' at qeth.c(2859)
(...)

Is this because on newer macOS, network devices don't actually exist under /dev? At least, from my understanding.

[giskard2035]

Is this because on newer macOS, network devices don't actually exist under /dev? At least, from my understanding.

right...
even on older versions of macOS tun/tap devices were not defined in the /dev directory and you had to install the tuntap package from Mattias Nissler

APPLE at some time decided not to let end users install unsigned/not-notarized kernel extensions, and the package responsible for creating the tun/tap interfaces would not work any longer ( unless the complicate procedure for notarization was followed )

I have other priorities right now, but as soon I find a time slot, I will update the utun support for the current hyperion version

enrico

[iblowmymind]

Alright, thank you very much! Would you be able to re-create your PR too? (I think you're the same person that initially made that PR based off of how you sign off from your messages) I would really love to see this merged.