General Information
-------- -----------
+-------------------
+
+Wireshark is a network traffic analyzer, or "sniffer", for Unix and
+Unix-like operating systems. It uses Qt, a graphical user interface
+library, and libpcap, a packet capture and filtering library.
-Ethereal is a network traffic analyzer for Unix and Unix-like operating
-systems. It is based on GTK+, a graphical user interface library,
-and libpcap, a packet capture and filtering library.
+The Wireshark distribution also comes with TShark, 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 Wireshark, 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
+The official home of Wireshark is
- http://ethereal.zing.org
+ https://www.wireshark.org
The latest distribution can be found in the subdirectory
- http://ethereal.zing.org/distribution
+ https://www.wireshark.org/download
Installation
------------
-Ethereal is known to compile and run on the following systems:
+The Wireshark project builds and tests regularly on the following platforms:
- - Linux (2.0.x)
- - Solaris (2.5.1, 2.6)
- - FreeBSD (2.2.5, 2.2.6)
+ - Linux (Ubuntu)
+ - Microsoft Windows
+ - macOS / {Mac} OS X
-It should run on other systems without too much trouble.
+Official installation packages are available for Microsoft Windows and
+macOS.
+It is available as either a standard or add-on package for many popular
+operating sytems and Linux distributions including Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora,
+CentOS, RHEL, Arch, Gentoo, openSUSE, FreeBSD, DragonFly BSD, NetBSD, and
+OpenBSD.
-Full installation instructions can be found in the INSTALL file.
-
+Additionaly it is available through many third-party packaging systems
+such as pkgsrc, OpenCSW, Homebrew, and MacPorts.
-Usage
------
+It should run on other Unix-ish systems without too much trouble.
+
+In some cases the current version of Wireshark might not support your
+operating system. This is the case for Windows XP, which is supported by
+Wireshark 1.10 and earlier. In other cases the standard package for
+Wireshark might simply be old. This is the case for Solaris and HP-UX.
+
+NOTE: The Makefile depends on GNU "make"; it doesn't appear to
+work with the "make" that comes with Solaris 7 nor the BSD "make".
-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 Solaris 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.
+Both Perl and Python are needed, the former for building the man pages.
+
+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, Python, GNU "make", "flex", and either "bison"
+or Berkeley "yacc" on systems that lack them.
+
+Full installation instructions can be found in the INSTALL file and in the
+Developer's Guide at https://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsdg_html_chunked/
+
+See also the appropriate README.<OS> files for OS-specific installation
+instructions.
+
+Usage
+-----
+
+In order to capture packets from the network, you need to make the
+dumpcap program set-UID to root, or you need to 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 Wireshark and TShark executables setuid root, or to run them as
+root please don't. The capture process has been isolated in dumpcap;
+this simple program is less likely to contain security holes, and thus
+safer to run as root.
Please consult the man page for a description of each command-line
option and interface feature.
-------------------
The wiretap library is a packet-capture library currently under
-development parallel to ethereal. In the future it is hoped that
+development parallel to wireshark. In the future it is hoped that
wiretap will have more features than libpcap, but wiretap is still in
-its infancy. You can compile ethereal with the wiretap library by using
-'./configure --with-wiretap'. Using wiretap will allow you to read
-libpcap, Sniffer, NetXray (and Sniffer Pro), Sun "snoop", LANalyzer,
-Microsoft Network Monitor, and AIX "iptrace" 2.0 trace files. Some minimal
-display filters now work. But because "Follow TCP Stream" relies on IP and TCP
-display filtering, and those aren't yet available in wiretap's display filter
-system, "Follow TCP Stream" is turned off when you compile --with-wiretap.
-
-You can still capture packets from within ethereal using libpcap, and therefore
-use libpcap-style capture filters, however.
-
-If you want to add support for other packet-capture file formats, please
-look at the wiretap source code in the wiretap directory.
-
-Please report any problems that are wiretap related to
-Gilbert Ramirez <gram@verdict.uthscsa.edu>. He uses token-ring at work, so he
-is especially interested in any non-token-ring trace files you can send him.
+its infancy. However, wiretap is used in wireshark for its ability
+to read multiple file types. See the Wireshark man page or the
+Wireshark User's Guide for a list of supported file formats.
+
+In addition, it can read gzipped versions of any of those files
+automatically, if you have the zlib library available when compiling
+Wireshark. Wireshark 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 Wireshark 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 Wireshark 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, Wireshark
+will complain when reading that file, but you will be able to read all
+other packets. If this occurs, please let the Wireshark developers know
+at wireshark-dev@wireshark.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. Wireshark can read
+the output of the "wandsession" "wandisplay", "wannext", and "wdd"
+commands.
+
+Wireshark 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".
+
+CoSine L2 debug output can also be read by Wireshark. To get the L2
+debug output, get in the diags mode first and then use
+"create-pkt-log-profile" and "apply-pkt-log-profile" commands under
+layer-2 category. For more detail how to use these commands, you
+should examine the help command by "layer-2 create ?" or "layer-2 apply ?".
+
+To use the Lucent/Ascend, Toshiba and CoSine traces with Wireshark, 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>
+----
+
+
+Name Resolution
+---------------
+
+Wireshark will attempt to use reverse name resolution capabilities
+when decoding IPv4 and IPv6 packets.
+
+If you want to turn off name resolution while using Wireshark, start
+Wireshark with the "-n" option to turn off all name resolution (including
+resolution of MAC addresses and TCP/UDP/SMTP port numbers to names), or
+with the "-N mt" option to turn off name resolution for all
+network-layer addresses (IPv4, IPv6, IPX).
+
+You can make that the default setting by opening the Preferences dialog
+box using the Preferences item in the Edit menu, selecting "Name
+resolution", turning off the appropriate name resolution options,
+clicking "Save", and clicking "OK".
+
+
+SNMP
+----
+
+Wireshark can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets; it can also use
+the libsmi library to do more sophisticated decoding, by reading MIB
+files and using the information in those files to display OIDs and
+variable binding values in a friendlier fashion. The configure script
+will automatically determine whether you have the libsmi library on
+your system. If you have the libsmi library but _do not_ want to have
+Wireshark use it, you can run configure with the "--without-libsmi"
+option.
+
+How to Report a Bug
+-------------------
+Wireshark is under constant development, so it is possible that you will
+encounter a bug while using it. Please report bugs at https://bugs.wireshark.org.
+Be sure you enter into the bug:
+
+1. The complete build information from the "About Wireshark"
+ item in the Help menu or the output of "wireshark -v" for
+ Wireshark bugs and the output of "tshark -v" for TShark bugs;
+
+2. If the bug happened on Linux, the Linux distribution you were
+ using, and the version of that distribution;
+
+3. The command you used to invoke Wireshark, if you ran
+ Wireshark from the command line, or TShark, if you ran
+ TShark, 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
+attach to the bug a trace file along with your bug description. If the
+trace file contains sensitive information (e.g., passwords), then please
+do not send it.
+
+If Wireshark died on you with a 'segmentation violation', 'bus error',
+'abort', or other error that produces a UNIX core dump file, 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 wireshark binary, and the resulting core file. Here's an example of
+how to use the gdb command 'backtrace' to do so.
+
+----
+$ gdb wireshark core
+(gdb) backtrace
+..... prints the stack trace
+(gdb) quit
+$
+----
+
+The core dump file may be named "wireshark.core" rather than "core" on
+some platforms (e.g., BSD systems). If you got a core dump with
+TShark rather than Wireshark, use "tshark" as the first argument to
+the debugger; the core dump may be named "tshark.core".
Disclaimer
----------
There is no warranty, expressed or implied, associated with this product.
Use at your own risk.
+
+
+Gerald Combs <gerald@wireshark.org>
+
+Gilbert Ramirez <gram@alumni.rice.edu>
+
+Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu>
git.samba.org / metze / wireshark / wip.git / blobdiff