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Ethereal-users: [Ethereal-users] Serial Port Captures

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From: "Crowe, Graham GP" <Graham.Crowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 17:33:40 +1000
Title: Serial Port Captures

Hi,
        I was wondering if it was possible to get ethereal to capture directly from a serial port. I don't want to intercept data between a PPP process and the port, I would like to bind ethereal (and only ethereal) to the serial port and capture everything that comes in. Some of the data will be PPP and I would like to decode it with ethereal's built in decoders, other data I need to look at as raw hex.

        I was intending to use an RS232 tap feeding into two serial ports (actually USB - RS232 converters) on a laptop, and would like to display the capture from both directions in the one window (but still be able to identify which direction the data went).

        I have been unable to get ethereal to bind to a serial port (I only get the netcards and the firewire port to select from). Is this possible, or should I look elsewhere for this functionality. I know there have been a few other messages similar to this in this forum, but they all seemed to involve intercepting the data between a process and the port, I was hoping that simply capturing data from a port would be much simpler.

I have managed to capture serial data to a file under both Linux and windows, but this data is not timestamped and it is impossible to merge the capture files from both directions (similar to what mergecap does).



Thank you

Graham Crowe
Electrical Engineer
Hot Strip Mill
Bluescope Steel's Port Kembla Works.

EOM

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