+$Id$
+
General Information
------- -----------
-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.
+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
+ http://www.ethereal.com
The latest distribution can be found in the subdirectory
- http://ethereal.zing.org/distribution
-
-Interesting and exotic packet traces can be found at
-
- http://ethereal.zing.org/~gram/sample.html
+ http://www.ethereal.com/distribution
Installation
Ethereal is known to compile and run on the following systems:
- - Linux (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x)
- - Solaris (2.5.1, 2.6)
- - FreeBSD (2.2.5, 2.2.6)
+ - Linux (2.0 and later kernels, various distributions)
+ - Solaris (2.5.1 and later)
+ - FreeBSD (2.2.5 and later)
+ - NetBSD
+ - OpenBSD
+ - Mac OS X (10.2 and later)
+ - HP-UX (10.20, 11.00, 11.11)
- Sequent PTX v4.4.5 (Nick Williams <njw@sequent.com>)
- - Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) (3.2, 4.0)
+ - Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) (3.2 and later)
+ - Irix (6.5)
+ - AIX (4.3.2, with a bit of work)
+ - Win32 (98, NT, 2000, XP)
+
+and possibly on other versions of those OSes. 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'.
-It should run on other systems without too much trouble.
+If you decide to modify the NetWare Core Protocol dissector, you
+will need python, as the data for packet types is stored in a python
+script, ncp2222.py.
+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.
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 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.
+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.
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. 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.
+its infancy. However, wiretap is used in ethereal for its ability
+to read multiple file types. You can read the following file
+formats:
+
+libpcap (tcpdump -w, etc.) - this is Ethereal's native format
+snoop and atmsnoop
+Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor
+Novell LANalyzer
+Network General/Network Associates DOS-based Sniffer (compressed and
+ uncompressed)
+Microsoft Network Monitor
+AIX's iptrace
+Cinco Networks NetXRray
+Network Associates Windows-based Sniffer
+AG Group/WildPackets EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek/EtherHelp
+RADCOM's WAN/LAN Analyzer
+Lucent/Ascend access products
+HP-UX's nettl
+Toshiba's ISDN routers
+ISDN4BSD "i4btrace" utility
+Cisco Secure Intrustion Detection System iplogging facility
+pppd logs (pppdump-format files)
+VMS's TCPIPtrace utility
+DBS Etherwatch for VMS
+Traffic captures from Visual Networks' Visual UpTime
+CoSine L2 debug output
+Output from Accellent's 5Views LAN agents
+Endace Measurement Systems' ERF format
+Linux Bluez Bluetooth stack "hcidump -w" traces
+Network Instruments Observer version 9
+Trace files for the EyeSDN USB S0
+
+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@ethereal.com, 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".
+
+CoSine L2 debug output can also be read by Ethereal. 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 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>
-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>.
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.
+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 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).
-The "Follow TCP Stream" feature only supports TCP over IPv4. Support for TCP
-over IPv6 is planned.
+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".
+
+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.
SNMP
----
-Ethereal can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets, but it relies on an
-external SNMP library to do this. You can use either the UCD or the CMU
-SNMP libraries. 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. No SNMP support will be compiled into
-ethereal with this option.
-
+Ethereal can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets; it can also use the
+UCD SNMP library, version 4.2.2 or later, 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
+UCD SNMP library on your system, and will use it if it's version 4.2.2
+or later. If you have an SNMP library but _do not_ want to have
+ethereal use it, you can run configure with the "--without-ucd-snmp"
+option.
+
+If you have an earlier version of the UCD SNMP library on your system,
+the configure script will stop, reporting that it can't find the
+"sprint_realloc_objid()" routine; you should either upgrade to version
+4.2.4 or later, as UCD SNMP 4.2.4 fixes some potential buffer overflow
+problems, or should configure with "--without-ucd-snmp".
+
+
+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@ethereal.com.
+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', '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 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
+$
+
+The core dump file may be named "ethereal.core" rather than "core" on
+some platforms (e.g., BSD systems). If you got a core dump with
+Tethereal rather than Ethereal, use "tethereal" as the first argument to
+the debugger; the core dump may be named "tethereal.core".
Disclaimer
----------
Use at your own risk.
-Gerald Combs <gerald@zing.org>
-Gilbert Ramirez <gram@verdict.uthscsa.edu>
+Gerald Combs <gerald@ethereal.com>
+Gilbert Ramirez <gram@alumni.rice.edu>
+Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu>
git.samba.org / metze / wireshark / wip.git / blobdiff