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 Wireshark can read packets from a number of different file types. See
88 the Wireshark man page or the Wireshark User's Guide for a list of
89 supported file formats.
91 Wireshark can transparently read gzipped versions of any of those files if
92 zlib was available when Wireshark was compiled. CMake will automatically
93 use zlib if it is found on your system. You can disable zlib support by
94 running `cmake -DENABLE_ZLIB=OFF`.
96 Although Wireshark can read AIX iptrace files, the documentation on
97 AIX's iptrace packet-trace command is sparse. The `iptrace` command
98 starts a daemon which you must kill in order to stop the trace. Through
99 experimentation it appears that sending a HUP signal to that iptrace
100 daemon causes a graceful shutdown and a complete packet is written
101 to the trace file. If a partial packet is saved at the end, Wireshark
102 will complain when reading that file, but you will be able to read all
103 other packets. If this occurs, please let the Wireshark developers know
104 at wireshark-dev@wireshark.org; be sure to send us a copy of that trace
105 file if it's small and contains non-sensitive data.
107 Support for Lucent/Ascend products is limited to the debug trace output
108 generated by the MAX and Pipline series of products. Wireshark can read
109 the output of the `wandsession`, `wandisplay`, `wannext`, and `wdd`
112 Wireshark can also read dump trace output from the Toshiba "Compact Router"
113 line of ISDN routers (TR-600 and TR-650). You can telnet to the router
114 and start a dump session with `snoop dump`.
116 CoSine L2 debug output can also be read by Wireshark. To get the L2
117 debug output first enter the diags mode and then use
118 `create-pkt-log-profile` and `apply-pkt-lozg-profile` commands under
119 layer-2 category. For more detail how to use these commands, you
120 should examine the help command by `layer-2 create ?` or `layer-2 apply ?`.
122 To use the Lucent/Ascend, Toshiba and CoSine traces with Wireshark, you must
123 capture the trace output to a file on disk. The trace is happening inside
124 the router and the router has no way of saving the trace to a file for you.
125 An easy way of doing this under Unix is to run `telnet <ascend> | tee <outfile>`.
126 Or, if your system has the "script" command installed, you can save
127 a shell session, including telnet, to a file. For example to log to a file
131 $ script tracefile.out
132 Script started on <date/time>
134 ..... do your trace, then exit from the router's telnet session.
136 Script done on <date/time>
143 Wireshark will attempt to use reverse name resolution capabilities
144 when decoding IPv4 and IPv6 packets.
146 If you want to turn off name resolution while using Wireshark, start
147 Wireshark with the `-n` option to turn off all name resolution (including
148 resolution of MAC addresses and TCP/UDP/SMTP port numbers to names) or
149 with the `-N mt` option to turn off name resolution for all
150 network-layer addresses (IPv4, IPv6, IPX).
152 You can make that the default setting by opening the Preferences dialog
153 using the Preferences item in the Edit menu, selecting "Name resolution",
154 turning off the appropriate name resolution options, and clicking "OK".
160 Wireshark can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets; it can also use
161 the libsmi library to do more sophisticated decoding by reading MIB
162 files and using the information in those files to display OIDs and
163 variable binding values in a friendlier fashion. CMake will automatically
164 determine whether you have the libsmi library on your system. If you
165 have the libsmi library but _do not_ want Wireshark to use it, you can run
166 cmake with the `-DENABLE_SMI=OFF` option.
171 Wireshark is under constant development, so it is possible that you will
172 encounter a bug while using it. Please report bugs at https://bugs.wireshark.org.
173 Be sure you enter into the bug:
175 1. The complete build information from the "About Wireshark"
176 item in the Help menu or the output of `wireshark -v` for
177 Wireshark bugs and the output of `tshark -v` for TShark bugs;
179 2. If the bug happened on Linux, the Linux distribution you were
180 using, and the version of that distribution;
182 3. The command you used to invoke Wireshark, if you ran
183 Wireshark from the command line, or TShark, if you ran
184 TShark, and the sequence of operations you performed that
185 caused the bug to appear.
187 If the bug is produced by a particular trace file, please be sure to
188 attach to the bug a trace file along with your bug description. If the
189 trace file contains sensitive information (e.g., passwords), then please
192 If Wireshark died on you with a 'segmentation violation', 'bus error',
193 'abort', or other error that produces a UNIX core dump file, you can
194 help the developers a lot if you have a debugger installed. A stack
195 trace can be obtained by using your debugger ('gdb' in this example),
196 the wireshark binary, and the resulting core file. Here's an example of
197 how to use the gdb command 'backtrace' to do so.
202 ..... prints the stack trace
207 The core dump file may be named "wireshark.core" rather than "core" on
208 some platforms (e.g., BSD systems). If you got a core dump with
209 TShark rather than Wireshark, use "tshark" as the first argument to
210 the debugger; the core dump may be named "tshark.core".
215 There is no warranty, expressed or implied, associated with this product.
216 Use at your own risk.
219 Gerald Combs <gerald@wireshark.org>
221 Gilbert Ramirez <gram@alumni.rice.edu>
223 Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu>