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Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Regarding bug 948 - capture vs preferences

From: Jeff Morriss <jeff.morriss@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:32:31 +0800


Ulf Lamping wrote:
Stephen Fisher wrote:
I am looking at bug #948, "Apply capture preferences not applying." The problem reported is that if you update a preference such as "Update list of packets in real time" and hit apply/OK then go to the capture options screen, the change is not reflected there. Glancing at the code, it looks like these preferences are only synchronized in main() when the program starts up - for example: capture_opts->promisc_mode = prefs->capture_prom_mode;

Does anyone see any reason why updates to the capture options in the preferences should not also update the capture options without having to restart the program? I don't think it should work the other way around though - the capture options screen feels more like per capture options to me.



As you (and the bug report) have mentioned, changes in the Preferences should affect the settings in capture_opts - the current behaviour is just a bug.

Changes in capture_opts e.g. in the "Capture Options" dialog - shouldn't change the Preferences settings (it would be odd if it would work that way).


A slightly different question remains:

Do we need these capture related Preference settings anymore as we have the recent file now?

The advantage of the preferences file is that I can push useful-for-our-environment defaults out to all our servers (via "/usr/local/share/wireshark/preferences") so all users get them automatically. E.g., I know that almost everyone will do "Update packets in real time" and will resolve host names (because the names to be resolved should always be in "/etc/inet/hosts" so the lookup is fast and network-less), so I just set those as the default.

Not a big deal, but that's one use for it.