On Tue, 1 Dec 1998, Adam Alexander wrote:
> I just finished compiling and installing libpcap and ethereal 0.5.0 with no
> problems. The program runs and everything appears to be running great until I
> try to start a capture. As soon as I hit OK from the Capture Preferences
> window, a smaller window appears above the ethereal window with nothing in it.
> Immediately, both ethereal and this smaller window stop responding to mouse
> clicks. If anyone has any information to help me it would be appreciated.
This probably has to do with the way libpcap works under Linux. In
order to capture packets off the wire, ethereal calls pcap_open_live()
(which takes a timeout argument), then repeatedly calls pcap_dispatch() to
read packet data. If there isn't any network activity within the timeout
period, pcap_dispatch() returns immediately and the program proceeds on
its merry way. This timeout isn't currently implemented under Linux,
however. As a result, the program freezes until a packet arrives.
One of the planned features for the wiretap library is the ability to
read packet data from a network interface, so this may not be an issue in
the future. Also, if you're interested I can dig up a patch for an
earlier version of libpcap that adds a timeout to the Linux capture code.
It was written by Brian Costello, the author of Karpski.
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