2.7. Installing the binaries under UNIX

In general installing the binary under your version of UNIX will be specific to the installation methods used with your version of UNIX. For example, under AIX, you would use smit to install the Wireshark binary package, while under Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) you would use setld.

2.7.1. Installing from RPMs under Red Hat and alike

Building RPMs from Wireshark’s source code results in several packages (most distributions follow the same system):

  • The wireshark package contains the core Wireshark libraries and command-line tools.
  • The wireshark or wireshark-qt package contains the Qt-based GUI.

Many distributions use yum or a similar package management tool to make installation of software (including its dependencies) easier. If your distribution uses yum, use the following command to install Wireshark together with the Qt GUI:

yum install wireshark wireshark-qt

If you’ve built your own RPMs from the Wireshark sources you can install them by running, for example:

rpm -ivh wireshark-2.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm wireshark-qt-2.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm

If the above command fails because of missing dependencies, install the dependencies first, and then retry the step above.

2.7.2. Installing from debs under Debian, Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives

If you can just install from the repository then use

apt install wireshark

Apt should take care of all of the dependency issues for you.

[Note]Capturing requires privileges

By installing Wireshark packages non-root users won’t gain rights automatically to capture packets. To allow non-root users to capture packets follow the procedure described in /usr/share/doc/wireshark-common/README.Debian

2.7.3. Installing from portage under Gentoo Linux

Use the following command to install Wireshark under Gentoo Linux with all of the extra features:

USE="c-ares ipv6 snmp ssl kerberos threads selinux" emerge wireshark

2.7.4. Installing from packages under FreeBSD

Use the following command to install Wireshark under FreeBSD:

pkg_add -r wireshark

pkg_add should take care of all of the dependency issues for you.