Demystifying iControl REST Part 5: Transferring Files

Hi all! This post was very helpful indeed. Also the hint with the central authentication and the requirement to upgrade to 12.1.2. However, I probably need another little hint...

When I upload a text-file (haven't tried any binary data yet) to the BigIP with the method described above, the file has a leading 0-byte.

That's the file on my management-host:

[matt@linuxhost rest_bigip]$ hexdump testfile -C
00000000  31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38  39 30 61 62 63 64 65 66  |1234567890abcdef|
00000010  67 68 69 6a 6b 6c 6d 6e  6f 70 71 72 73 74 75 76  |ghijklmnopqrstuv|
00000020  77 78 79 7a 0a                                    |wxyz.|
00000025

after posting it to the BigIP:

[matt@linuxhost rest_bigip]$ curl -X POST https://ixi3-lab-lb2-1/mgmt/shared/file-transfer/uploads/testname.txt -H "Content-Type: application/octet-stream" -H "Content-Range: 1-36/36" -H "X-F5-Auth-Token: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX" -d @testfile -vvv 
    * About to connect() to ixi3-lab-lb2-1 port 443 (0)
    *   Trying 10.150.250.156... connected
    * Connected to ixi3-lab-lb2-1 (10.150.250.156) port 443 (0)
    * Initializing NSS with certpath: sql:/etc/pki/nssdb
    *   CAfile: xxxx
      CApath: none
    * SSL connection using TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA
    * Server certificate:
    *       xxxxxx
    > POST /mgmt/shared/file-transfer/uploads/testname.txt HTTP/1.1
    > User-Agent: curl/7.19.7 (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.19.7 NSS/3.19.1 Basic ECC zlib/1.2.3 libidn/1.18 libssh2/1.4.2
    > Host: ixi3-lab-lb2-1
    > Accept: */*
    > Content-Type: application/octet-stream
    > Content-Range: 1-36/36
    > X-F5-Auth-Token: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
    > Content-Length: 36
    > 
    < HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    < Date: 15 Feb 2017 15:21:20 UTC
    < Server: com.f5.rest.common.RestRequestSender
    < X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
    < Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=16070400; includeSubDomains
    < Pragma: no-cache
    < Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate
    < Expires: -1
    < Content-Length: 241
    < Content-Type: application/json
    < Content-Range: 1-36/36
    < Local-Ip-From-Httpd: 10.150.250.156
    < X-Forwarded-Server: localhost.localdomain
    < X-Forwarded-Proto: http
    < X-Forwarded-Host: ixi3-lab-lb2-1
    < X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
    < X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
    < Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'  'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval'; img-src 'self'  http://127.4.1.1 http://127.4.2.1
    < 
    * Connection 0 to host ixi3-lab-lb2-1 left intact
    * Closing connection 0
    {"remainingByteCount":0,"usedChunks":{"1":36},"totalByteCount":36,"localFilePath":"/var/config/rest/downloads/testname.txt","temporaryFilePath":"/var/config/rest/downloads/tmp/testname.txt","generation":0,"lastUpdateMicros":1487172080246573}

The file on the BigIP does not look quite the same (note byte 0 being 0x00, as opposed to 0x31 in the original file):

   [matt@ixi3-lab-lb2-1:Active:Standalone] ~  xxd /var/config/rest/downloads/testname.txt
    0000000: 0031 3233 3435 3637 3839 3061 6263 6465  .1234567890abcde
    0000010: 6667 6869 6a6b 6c6d 6e6f 7071 7273 7475  fghijklmnopqrstu
    0000020: 7677 7879 7a                             vwxyz

Also the original "\n" seems to be trimmed off, which isn't a problem in this case. Just mentioning it for the sake of completeness. I tried to use Content-Type: text/plain instead of "application/octet-stream", I tried binary-transfer, nothing seems to help. What am I missing here? Thanks for your help!

regards, Matt

update:

trace-ascii shows that curl seems to be sending the post data correctly

   => Send data, 36 bytes (0x24)
    0000: 1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
    <= Recv header, 17 bytes (0x11)
    0000: HTTP/1.1 200 OK