Wireshark (aka Ethereal) is a free packet sniffer computer application. It
is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications
protocol development, and education. In June 2006, the project was renamed
from Ethereal due to trademark issues.
The functionality Wireshark provides is very similar to tcpdump, but it has
a graphical front-end and many more information sorting and filtering
options. It allows the user to see all traffic being passed over the network
(usually an Ethernet network but support is being added for others) by
putting the network interface into promiscuous mode.
Wireshark uses the cross-platform Qt5 widget toolkit. Its powerful features
make it the tool of choice for network troubleshooting, protocol development,
and education worldwide.
If you use a filesystem that supports posix capabilities, an easy way to
start wireshark as a normal user, while still providing it with all of the
access permissions it requires, is by issuing the following command:
$ setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin=eip /usr/bin/dumpcap
One may also test if things are ok running this command as a normal user:
$ dumpcap -L
You may also create a special group (wireshark) and include users allowed
to monitor networks in that group:
# groupadd wireshark
# usermod -a -G wireshark <user>
# chgrp wireshark /usr/bin/dumpcap
# chmod 750 /usr/bin/dumpcap
# setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin=eip /usr/bin/dumpcap
$ newgrp wireshark
Other users not in the group wireshark can still open files with previously
saved monitorings and inspect them.
You will need to remove any already-installed wireshark package before
building this one or else the new one will not work (the new build will
link libraries present in the old package, which will then be removed
when upgrading).
Optional dependencies:
- spandsp
- snappy
- libsmi
- libminizip
- libilbc
NOTE: Wireshark 3.0 no longer support legacy GTK+ UI.
NOTE: Although lua is listed as a requirement, it's possible to build
using lua52. This may be needed for some third-party Lua plugins (but,
it may break other third-party Lua plugins; your mileage may vary). The
default is to build with lua52 if it's installed, or lua otherwise. If
you have both lua versions installed, you can build with LUA52=no in
the environment to build with the older lua.
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