Wireshark · Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Run Wireshark from USB?

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sep 15, 2008, at 2:33 PM, Q wrote:

> A small problem there - you seem to only be able to install it on a
> specific brand of USB stick - which I don't have.
>
> I'm not quite certain why it has to be a specific brand of USB stick.

Because the U3 mechanism was developed by a company that wanted to use  
it to sell their USB sticks.

We also offer a PortableApps package:

	http://portableapps.com/

from the download page:

	http://www.wireshark.org/download.html

which I don't think requires a specific type of USB stick.  However,  
it might also install WinPcap, and, if it doesn't, Wireshark will only  
work if WinPcap is already installed on the machine; if you want to  
capture traffic with Wireshark on Windows you *MUST* have WinPcap  
installed on the machine on which you're running Wireshark (just as if  
you want to capture traffic with Wireshark on Linux you must have  
PF_PACKET sockets enabled in the kernel and have libpcap installed,  
and if you want to capture traffic with Wireshark on *BSD you must  
have BPF configured into your kernel (libpcap is, I think, installed  
by default), and so on).