Wireshark is a network traffic analyzer, or "sniffer", for Linux, macOS,
*BSD and other Unix and Unix-like operating systems and for Windows.
It uses Qt, a graphical user interface library, and libpcap and npcap as
packet capture and filtering libraries.
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 Wireshark is https://www.wireshark.org.
The latest distribution can be found in the subdirectory https://www.wireshark.org/download
Installation
The Wireshark project builds and tests regularly on the following platforms:
- Linux (Ubuntu)
- Microsoft Windows
- macOS / {Mac} OS X
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.
Additionaly it is available through many third-party packaging systems
such as pkgsrc, OpenCSW, Homebrew, and MacPorts.
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".
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 is thus
safer to run as root.
Please consult the man page for a description of each command-line
option and interface feature.
Multiple File Types
Wireshark can read packets from a number of different file types. See
the Wireshark man page or the Wireshark User's Guide for a list of
supported file formats.
Wireshark can transparently read gzipped versions of any of those files if
zlib was available when Wireshark was compiled. CMake will automatically
use zlib if it is found on your system. You can disable zlib support by
running cmake -DENABLE_ZLIB=OFF.
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; 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 first enter the diags mode and then use
create-pkt-log-profile and apply-pkt-lozg-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 log 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
using the Preferences item in the Edit menu, selecting "Name resolution",
turning off the appropriate name resolution options, 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. CMake will automatically
determine whether you have the libsmi library on your system. If you
have the libsmi library but do not want Wireshark to use it, you can run
cmake with the -DENABLE_SMI=OFF 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:
-
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;
-
If the bug happened on Linux, the Linux distribution you were
using, and the version of that distribution;
-
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
