a pointer to the "wtap_pkthdr" structure for an open capture
file;
a pointer to the "wtap_pseudo_header" union for an open capture
file;
a pointer to the packet buffer for an open capture file;
so that a program using "wtap_read()" in a loop can get at those items.
Keep, in a "capture_file" structure, an indicator of whether:
no file is open;
a file is open, and being read;
a file is open, and is being read, but the user tried to quit
out of reading the file (e.g., by doing "File/Quit");
a file is open, and has been completely read.
Abort if we try to close a capture that's being read if the user hasn't
tried to quit out of the read.
Have "File/Quit" check if a file is being read; if so, just set the
state indicator to "user tried to quit out of it", so that the code
reading the file can do what's appropriate to clean up, rather than
closing the file out from under that code and causing crashes.
Have "read_cap_file()" read the capture file with a loop using
"wtap_read()", rather than by using "wtap_loop()"; have it check after
reading each packet whether the user tried to abort the read and, if so,
close the capture and return an indication that the read was aborted by
the user. Otherwise, return an indication of whether the read
completely succeeded or failed in the middle (and, if it failed, return
the error code through a pointer).
Have "continue_tail_cap_file()" read the capture file with a loop using
"wtap_read()", rather than by using "wtap_loop()"; have it check after
reading each packet whether the user tried to abort the read and, if so,
quit the loop, and after the loop finishes (even if it read no packets),
return an indication that the read was aborted by the user if that
happened. Otherwise, return an indication of whether the read
completely succeeded or failed in the middle (and, if it failed, return
the error code through a pointer).
Have "finish_tail_cap_file()" read the capture file with a loop using
"wtap_read()", rather than by using "wtap_loop()"; have it check after
reading each packet whether the user tried to abort the read and, if so,
quit the loop, and after the loop finishes (even if it read no packets),
close the capture and return an indication that the read was aborted by
the user if that happened. Otherwise, return an indication of whether
the read completely succeeded or failed in the middle (and, if it
failed, return the error code through a pointer).
Have their callers check whether the read was aborted or not and, if it
was, bail out in the appropriate fashion (exit if it's reading a file
specified by "-r" on the command line; exit the main loop if it's
reading a file specified with File->Open; kill the capture child if it's
"continue_tail_cap_file()"; exit the main loop if it's
"finish_tail_cap_file()".
svn path=/trunk/; revision=2095
$Id: README,v 1.38 2000/06/08 03:09:26 gram Exp $
General Information
------- -----------
Ethereal is a network traffic analyzer, or "sniffer", for Unix and
Unix-like operating systems. It uses GTK+, a graphical user interface
library, and libpcap, a packet capture and filtering library.
The Ethereal distribution also comes with Tethereal, which is a
line-oriented sniffer (similar to Sun's snoop, or tcpdump) that uses the
same dissection, capture-file reading and writing, and packet filtering
code as Ethereal, and with editcap, which is a program to read capture
files and write the packets from that capture file, possibly in a
different capture file format, and with some packets possibly removed
from the capture.
The official home of Ethereal is
http://ethereal.zing.org
The latest distribution can be found in the subdirectory
http://ethereal.zing.org/distribution
Installation
------------
Ethereal is known to compile and run on the following systems:
- Linux (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x)
- Solaris (2.5.1, 2.6, 7)
- FreeBSD (2.2.5, 2.2.6, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3)
- Sequent PTX v4.4.5 (Nick Williams <njw@sequent.com>)
- Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) (3.2, 4.0)
- Irix (6.5)
- AIX (4.3.2, with a bit of work)
- Win32 (NT, 98)
It should run on other Unix-ish systems without too much trouble.
NOTE: the Makefile appears to depend on GNU "make"; it doesn't appear to
work with the "make" that comes with Solaris 7 nor the BSD "make".
Perl is also needed to create the man page.
If you decide to modify the yacc grammar or lex scanner, then
you need "flex" - it cannot be built with vanilla "lex" -
and either "bison" or the Berkeley "yacc". Your flex
version must be 2.5.1 or greater. Check this with 'flex -V'.
You must therefore install Perl, GNU "make", "flex", and either "bison" or
Berkeley "yacc" on systems that lack them.
Full installation instructions can be found in the INSTALL file.
See also the appropriate README.<OS> files for OS-specific installation
instructions.
Usage
-----
In order to capture packets from the network, you need to be running as
root, or have access to the appropriate entry under /dev if your system
is so inclined (BSD-derived systems, and systems such as Solaris and
HP-UX that support DLPI, typically fall into this category). Although
it might be tempting to make the Ethereal executable setuid root, please
don't - alpha code is by nature not very robust, and liable to contain
security holes.
Please consult the man page for a description of each command-line
option and interface feature.
Multiple File Types
-------------------
The wiretap library is a packet-capture library currently under
development parallel to ethereal. In the future it is hoped that
wiretap will have more features than libpcap, but wiretap is still in
its infancy. However, wiretap is used in ethereal for its ability
to read multiple file types. You can read the following file
formats, and create display filters for them as well:
libpcap (tcpdump -w), Sniffer (compressed and uncompressed), NetXray,
Sniffer Pro, snoop, Shomiti, LANalyzer, Microsoft Network Monitor, AIX's
iptrace, RADCOM's WAN/LAN Analyzer, Lucent/Ascend access products, HP-UX's
nettl, Toshiba's ISDN routers, and the ISDN4BSD "i4btrace" utility.
In addition, it can read gzipped versions of any of these files
automatically, if you have the zlib library available when compiling
Ethereal. Ethereal needs a modern version of zlib to be able to use
zlib to read gzipped files; version 1.1.3 is known to work. Versions
prior to 1.0.9 are missing some functions that Ethereal needs and won't
work. "./configure" should detect if you have the proper zlib version
available and, if you don't, should disable zlib support. You can always
use "./configure --disable-zlib" to explicitly disable zlib support.
Although Ethereal can read AIX iptrace files, the documentation on
AIX's iptrace packet-trace command is sparse. The 'iptrace' command
starts a daemon which you must kill in order to stop the trace. Through
experimentation it appears that sending a HUP signal to that iptrace
daemon causes a graceful shutdown and a complete packet is written
to the trace file. If a partial packet is saved at the end, Ethereal
will complain when reading that file, but you will be able to read all
other packets. If this occurs, please let the Ethereal developers know
at ethereal-dev@zing.org, and be sure to send us a copy of that trace
file if it's small and contains non-sensitive data.
Support for Lucent/Ascend products is limited to the debug trace output
generated by the MAX and Pipline series of products. Ethereal can read
the output of the "wandsession" "wandisplay", "wannext", and "wdd"
commands. For detailed information on use of these commands, please refer
the following pages:
"wandsession", "wandisplay", and "wannext" on the Pipeline series:
http://aos.ascend.com/aos:/gennavviewer.html?doc_id=0900253d80006c79
"wandsession", "wandisplay", and "wannext" on the MAX series:
http://aos.ascend.com/aos:/gennavviewer.html?doc_id=0900253d80006972
"wdd" on the Pipeline series:
http://aos.ascend.com/aos:/gennavviewer.html?doc_id=0900253d80006877
Ethereal can also read dump trace output from the Toshiba "Compact Router"
line of ISDN routers (TR-600 and TR-650). You can telnet to the router
and start a dump session with "snoop dump".
To use the Lucent/Ascend and Toshiba traces with Ethereal, you must capture
the trace output to a file on disk. The trace is happening inside the router
and the router has no way of saving the trace to a file for you.
An easy way of doing this under Unix is to run "telnet <ascend> | tee <outfile>".
Or, if your system has the "script" command installed, you can save
a shell session, including telnet to a file. For example, to a file named
tracefile.out:
$ script tracefile.out
Script started on <date/time>
$ telnet router
..... do your trace, then exit from the router's telnet session.
$ exit
Script done on <date/time>
IPv6
----
If your operating system includes IPv6 support, ethereal will attempt to
use reverse name resolution capabilities when decoding IPv6 packets. If
you want to turn off name resolution while using ethereal, start ethereal
with the "-n" option. If you would like to compile ethereal without
support for IPv6 name resolution, use the "--disable-ipv6" option with
"./configure". If you compile ethereal without IPv6 name resolution,
you will still be able to decode IPv6 packets, but you'll only see IPv6
addresses, not host names.
The "Follow TCP Stream" feature only supports TCP over IPv4. Support for TCP
over IPv6 is planned.
SNMP
----
Ethereal can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets; it can also use an
external SNMP library to do more sophisticated decoding.. The configure
script will automatically determine which library you have on your
system and will use it. If you have an SNMP library but _do not_ want
to have ethereal use it, you can run configure with the "--disable-snmp"
option.
How to Report a Bug
-------------------
Ethereal is still under constant development, so it is possible that you will
encounter a bug while using it. Please report bugs to ethereal-dev@zing.org.
Be sure you tell us:
1) Operating System and version (the command 'uname -sr' may
tell you this, although on Linux systems it will probably
tell you only the version number of the Linux kernel, not of
the distribution as a whole; on Linux systems, please tell us
both the version number of the kernel, and which version of
which distribution you're running)
2) Version of GTK+ (the command 'gtk-config --version' will tell you)
3) Version of Ethereal (the command 'ethereal -v' will tell you,
unless the bug is so severe as to prevent that from working,
and should also tell you the versions of libraries with which
it was built)
4) The command you used to invoke Ethereal, and the sequence of
operations you performed that caused the bug to appear
If the bug is produced by a particular trace file, please be sure to send
a trace file along with your bug description. Please don't send a trace file
greater than 1 MB when compressed. If the trace file contains sensitive
information (e.g., passwords), then please do not send it.
If Ethereal died on you with a 'segmentation violation', you can help the
developers a lot if you have a debugger installed. A stack trace can be
obtained by using your debugger ('gdb' in this example), the ethereal binary,
and the resulting core file. Here's an example of how to use the gdb
command 'backtrace' to do so.
$ gdb ethereal core
(gdb) backtrace
..... prints the stack trace
(gdb) quit
$
Disclaimer
----------
There is no warranty, expressed or implied, associated with this product.
Use at your own risk.
Gerald Combs <gerald@zing.org>
Gilbert Ramirez <gram@xiexie.org>