ANNOUNCEMENT: Live Wireshark University & Allegro Packets online APAC Wireshark Training Session
April 17th, 2024 | 14:30-16:00 SGT (UTC+8) | Online

Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Installing with libpcap 1.0

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:16:41 -0700

On Sep 10, 2009, at 12:01 PM, Brian Rayburn wrote:

So I'm running Ubuntu and installing wireshark with apt-get. I installed libpcap 1.0 before installing wireshark using autoconf but wireshark still installs with libpcap .9.

By "installs with" do you mean "runs with"? I don't think any debs for Wireshark themselves *include* a deb for libpcap; however, as they're probably built with a libpcap shared library, they probably *depend* on the libpcap deb.

I hope that dependence can be, and is, expressed as "needs libpcap .9 *or later*", so it doesn't *fail* if 1.0 is installed. Given that libpcap 1.0 is binary-compatible with earlier versions, it should, if possible, be so expressed.

Unfortunately, the "obvious" version number of libpcap 0.x is 0 and the "obvious" version number of libpcap 1.x is 1, so, unless the packagers have, for example, either

	1) ignored that and called it libpcap.0

or

2) added the appropriate symlinks so that programs expecting a libpcap.0 shared library will be linked with the libpcap.1 shared library

that binary compatibility won't actually work.

On top of that, I infer that "I installed libpcap 1.0 before installing wireshark using autoconf" means you built libpcap 1.0 from source and installed it; libpcap 1.0, by default, builds and installs only a static library, which means that only programs that you compile with that version of libpcap after you install that version will use it - Wireshark, which is probably dynamically linked with libpcap, won't.

However:

I need 1.0 in order to sniff USB messages.

...what you *really* want in order to sniff USB messages is the top-of- Git-tree version of libpcap, as that fixes a bunch of bugs in USB sniffing.

Another advantage of the top-of-Git-tree version of libpcap is that...

...it builds and installs a shared library by default on most platforms, including Linux.

It won't *replace* the libpcap on your system by default, as it'll install libpcap in /usr/local/lib rather than /usr/lib.