Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Adding a protocol under ONC-RPC
From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:47:23 -0700

On Apr 23, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Andrew Kleinerman wrote:

My current project is integrating a small protocol into Wireshark for
analysis and I feel a little out of my depth.  The protocol is sent
over TCP on a non-standard port and uses the Sun XDR RPC.

Do you mean "use XDR" or "use RPC"?

If you're just using XDR, take a look at the NDMP dissector (epan/ dissectors/packet-ndmp.c); that's an example of a protocol using XDR *without* being based on ONC RPC.

If you use RPC...

 I went
through the step-by-step guide of creating a basic dissector, and
Wireshark will recognize it as the new protocol.  However, my problem
is that I cannot call dissect_rpc or dissect_rpc_tcp from my dissector
(I'm assuming for some good reason) to dissect the RPC.

...then, in Soviet Wireshark, RPC dissector calls YOU! (Sorry, I couldn't resist. :-))

I.e., if your dissector uses ONC RPC, when your dissector registers its program number (with rpc_init_prog()) and its handlers for its procedures (with rpc_init_proc_table()), that tells the RPC dissector how to recognize your protocol; it will call the handlers for your procedures when it recognizes a call to or reply from one of them.

See, for example, epan/dissectors/packet-rwall.c.

So I'm
guessing I have to make the RPC dissector properly see it on a
different port (is that right?).

No. The RPC dissector will handle that for you - it doesn't care what port the traffic uses, as the only ONC RPC-based protocol that *requires* a particular port number is the portmapper/rpcbind protocol (because it's the protocol that's used to find the particular port number/transport-layer address, on a particular server, that a particular RPC program uses).