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Put in a note about enabling the Packet protocol; if it's not enabled on
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a Linux kernel, network analysis programs such as tcpdump or
Ethereal/Tethereal won't be able to capture packets.

svn path=/trunk/; revision=1652
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guyharris committed Feb 19, 2000
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32 changes: 28 additions & 4 deletions README.linux
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@@ -1,7 +1,31 @@
$Id: README.linux,v 1.5 2000/02/01 21:52:22 guy Exp $
$Id: README.linux,v 1.6 2000/02/19 21:44:13 guy Exp $

The standard libpcap compiled for Linux has a timeout problem; it
doesn't support the timeout argument to "pcap_open_live()".
In order to capture packets (with Ethereal/Tethereal, tcpdump, or any
other packet capture program) on a Linux system, the "packet" protocol
must be supported by your kernel. If it is not, you may get error
messages such as

modprobe: can't locate module net-pf-17

in "/var/adm/messages". The following note is from the Linux
"Configure.help" file:

Packet socket
CONFIG_PACKET
The Packet protocol is used by applications which communicate
directly with network devices without an intermediate network
protocol implemented in the kernel, e.g. tcpdump. If you want them
to work, choose Y.

This driver is also available as a module called af_packet.o ( =
code which can be inserted in and removed from the running kernel
whenever you want). If you want to compile it as a module, say M
here and read Documentation/modules.txt; if you use modprobe or
kmod, you may also want to add "alias net-pf-17 af_packet" to
/etc/modules.conf.

In addition, the standard libpcap compiled for Linux has a timeout
problem; it doesn't support the timeout argument to "pcap_open_live()".

The current version of Ethereal attempts to work around this, so its GUI
shouldn't freeze when capturing on a not-so-busy network. If its GUI
Expand All @@ -13,7 +37,7 @@ The current version of Ethereal should work with versions of libpcap
that have been patched to fix the timeout problem, as well as working
with unpatched versions.

An additional problem, on Linux, with current versions of libpcap is
An additional problem, on Linux, with current versions of libpcap, is
that capture filters do not work when snooping loopback devices; if
you're capturing on a Linux loopback device, do not use a capture
filter, as it will probably reject most if not all packets, including
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