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
Ethereal is known to compile and run on the following systems:
- - Linux (2.0.x)
- - Solaris (2.5.1, 2.6)
- - FreeBSD (2.2.5, 2.2.6)
+ - Linux (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.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)
It should run on other 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 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
-pcap, Sniffer, Sun "snoop", and LANalyzer trace files, but it disables
-display filters. You can still capture packets from within ethereal
-using libpcap, and therefore use libpcap-style capture filters, however.
-
-If you can live without display filters and would like to read non-pcap
-capture files, give wiretap a try. 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 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 (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>
git.samba.org / obnox / wireshark / wip.git / blobdiff