4 Wireshark is a network traffic analyzer, or "sniffer", for Unix and
5 Unix-like operating systems. It uses Qt, a graphical user interface
6 library, and libpcap, a packet capture and filtering library.
8 The Wireshark distribution also comes with TShark, which is a
9 line-oriented sniffer (similar to Sun's snoop or tcpdump) that uses the
10 same dissection, capture-file reading and writing, and packet filtering
11 code as Wireshark, and with editcap, which is a program to read capture
12 files and write the packets from that capture file, possibly in a
13 different capture file format, and with some packets possibly removed
16 The official home of Wireshark is https://www.wireshark.org.
18 The latest distribution can be found in the subdirectory https://www.wireshark.org/download
24 The Wireshark project builds and tests regularly on the following platforms:
30 Official installation packages are available for Microsoft Windows and
33 It is available as either a standard or add-on package for many popular
34 operating sytems and Linux distributions including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora,
35 CentOS, RHEL, Arch, Gentoo, openSUSE, FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD, NetBSD, and
38 Additionaly it is available through many third-party packaging systems
39 such as pkgsrc, OpenCSW, Homebrew, and MacPorts.
41 It should run on other Unix-ish systems without too much trouble.
43 In some cases the current version of Wireshark might not support your
44 operating system. This is the case for Windows XP, which is supported by
45 Wireshark 1.10 and earlier. In other cases the standard package for
46 Wireshark might simply be old. This is the case for Solaris and HP-UX.
48 NOTE: The Makefile depends on GNU "make"; it doesn't appear to
49 work with the "make" that comes with Solaris 7 nor the BSD "make".
51 Both Perl and Python are needed, the former for building the man pages.
53 If you decide to modify the yacc grammar or lex scanner, then
54 you need "flex" - it cannot be built with vanilla "lex" -
55 and either "bison" or the Berkeley "yacc". Your flex
56 version must be 2.5.1 or greater. Check this with `flex -V`.
58 You must therefore install Perl, Python, GNU "make", "flex", and either "bison"
59 or Berkeley "yacc" on systems that lack them.
61 Full installation instructions can be found in the INSTALL file and in the
62 Developer's Guide at https://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsdg_html_chunked/
64 See also the appropriate README._OS_ files for OS-specific installation
70 In order to capture packets from the network, you need to make the
71 dumpcap program set-UID to root or you need to have access to the
72 appropriate entry under `/dev` if your system is so inclined (BSD-derived
73 systems, and systems such as Solaris and HP-UX that support DLPI,
74 typically fall into this category). Although it might be tempting to
75 make the Wireshark and TShark executables setuid root, or to run them as
76 root please don't. The capture process has been isolated in dumpcap;
77 this simple program is less likely to contain security holes and is thus
80 Please consult the man page for a description of each command-line
81 option and interface feature.
87 The wiretap library is a packet-capture library currently under
88 development parallel to Wireshark. In the future it is hoped that
89 wiretap will have more features than libpcap, but wiretap is still in
90 its infancy. However, wiretap is used in wireshark for its ability
91 to read multiple file types. See the Wireshark man page or the
92 Wireshark User's Guide for a list of supported file formats.
94 In addition, it can read gzipped versions of any of those files
95 automatically if you have the zlib library available when compiling
96 Wireshark. Wireshark needs a modern version of zlib to be able to use
97 zlib to read gzipped files; version 1.1.3 is known to work. Versions
98 prior to 1.0.9 are missing some functions that Wireshark needs and won't
99 work. CMake will automatically use zlib if it is found on your system.
100 You can disable zlib support by running `cmake -DENABLE_ZLIB=OFF`.
102 Although Wireshark can read AIX iptrace files, the documentation on
103 AIX's iptrace packet-trace command is sparse. The `iptrace` command
104 starts a daemon which you must kill in order to stop the trace. Through
105 experimentation it appears that sending a HUP signal to that iptrace
106 daemon causes a graceful shutdown and a complete packet is written
107 to the trace file. If a partial packet is saved at the end, Wireshark
108 will complain when reading that file, but you will be able to read all
109 other packets. If this occurs, please let the Wireshark developers know
110 at wireshark-dev@wireshark.org; be sure to send us a copy of that trace
111 file if it's small and contains non-sensitive data.
113 Support for Lucent/Ascend products is limited to the debug trace output
114 generated by the MAX and Pipline series of products. Wireshark can read
115 the output of the `wandsession`, `wandisplay`, `wannext`, and `wdd`
118 Wireshark can also read dump trace output from the Toshiba "Compact Router"
119 line of ISDN routers (TR-600 and TR-650). You can telnet to the router
120 and start a dump session with `snoop dump`.
122 CoSine L2 debug output can also be read by Wireshark. To get the L2
123 debug output first enter the diags mode and then use
124 `create-pkt-log-profile` and `apply-pkt-lozg-profile` commands under
125 layer-2 category. For more detail how to use these commands, you
126 should examine the help command by `layer-2 create ?` or `layer-2 apply ?`.
128 To use the Lucent/Ascend, Toshiba and CoSine traces with Wireshark, you must
129 capture the trace output to a file on disk. The trace is happening inside
130 the router and the router has no way of saving the trace to a file for you.
131 An easy way of doing this under Unix is to run `telnet <ascend> | tee <outfile>`.
132 Or, if your system has the "script" command installed, you can save
133 a shell session, including telnet, to a file. For example to log to a file
137 $ script tracefile.out
138 Script started on <date/time>
140 ..... do your trace, then exit from the router's telnet session.
142 Script done on <date/time>
149 Wireshark will attempt to use reverse name resolution capabilities
150 when decoding IPv4 and IPv6 packets.
152 If you want to turn off name resolution while using Wireshark, start
153 Wireshark with the `-n` option to turn off all name resolution (including
154 resolution of MAC addresses and TCP/UDP/SMTP port numbers to names) or
155 with the `-N mt` option to turn off name resolution for all
156 network-layer addresses (IPv4, IPv6, IPX).
158 You can make that the default setting by opening the Preferences dialog
159 using the Preferences item in the Edit menu, selecting "Name resolution",
160 turning off the appropriate name resolution options, and clicking "OK".
166 Wireshark can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets; it can also use
167 the libsmi library to do more sophisticated decoding by reading MIB
168 files and using the information in those files to display OIDs and
169 variable binding values in a friendlier fashion. CMake will automatically
170 determine whether you have the libsmi library on your system. If you
171 have the libsmi library but _do not_ want Wireshark to use it, you can run
172 cmake with the `-DENABLE_SMI=OFF` option.
177 Wireshark is under constant development, so it is possible that you will
178 encounter a bug while using it. Please report bugs at https://bugs.wireshark.org.
179 Be sure you enter into the bug:
181 1. The complete build information from the "About Wireshark"
182 item in the Help menu or the output of `wireshark -v` for
183 Wireshark bugs and the output of `tshark -v` for TShark bugs;
185 2. If the bug happened on Linux, the Linux distribution you were
186 using, and the version of that distribution;
188 3. The command you used to invoke Wireshark, if you ran
189 Wireshark from the command line, or TShark, if you ran
190 TShark, and the sequence of operations you performed that
191 caused the bug to appear.
193 If the bug is produced by a particular trace file, please be sure to
194 attach to the bug a trace file along with your bug description. If the
195 trace file contains sensitive information (e.g., passwords), then please
198 If Wireshark died on you with a 'segmentation violation', 'bus error',
199 'abort', or other error that produces a UNIX core dump file, you can
200 help the developers a lot if you have a debugger installed. A stack
201 trace can be obtained by using your debugger ('gdb' in this example),
202 the wireshark binary, and the resulting core file. Here's an example of
203 how to use the gdb command 'backtrace' to do so.
208 ..... prints the stack trace
213 The core dump file may be named "wireshark.core" rather than "core" on
214 some platforms (e.g., BSD systems). If you got a core dump with
215 TShark rather than Wireshark, use "tshark" as the first argument to
216 the debugger; the core dump may be named "tshark.core".
221 There is no warranty, expressed or implied, associated with this product.
222 Use at your own risk.
225 Gerald Combs <gerald@wireshark.org>
227 Gilbert Ramirez <gram@alumni.rice.edu>
229 Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu>