Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: [Ethereal-dev] hethereal: HTML output & control / client-server issue....

[Carsten Buchenau <carsten@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there,

I have seen with delight that someone remembered some work I was doing 3 
years ago... the project was called hethereal and is basically a 
modified tethereal to be used as cgi-bin, see
http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/200104/msg00201.html

This work was part of my diploma work (I did together with Hartmut 
Mueller and Tim Abenath) where we created a network protocol analyzer 
with an embedded PC running on Linux, sized like a box of cigarettes. 
The idea was to place this little box anywhere inside a Network and then 
connect to the HTML interface from any PC by using *any* JavaScript 
enabled Web browser.

Of course we cared about all relevant security issues etc., but that's 
not the point here...basically, the work relates to two discussions that 
occured on this list recently:
- HTML output (including the XML/PDML thread)
- the wish to remotely control ethereal from any computer within a 
network (client-server thread)

Briefly, the old hethereal worked like this:
- read in capture file and specified read filters (supplied by using a 
form interface)
- produce ONE output stream, containing ALL packet details from the 
capture (after applying the read filter, of course). This was pure 
JavaScript, creating JavaScript on-the-fly for the details-frame when a 
packet was chosen in the summary frame. So no need for any re-connection 
when choosing a packet and - very important - no need for any 
proprietary Microsoft stuff (maybe this is of special interest to 
Fulvio's students ;-) ).

So far for what was done 3 years ago... recently, we decided to pick-up 
our work and do a complete redesign of hethereal (by the way, the "h" 
stands for html.... and please do not missspell it as heathereal ;-) ).

To do this, we have identified the following tasks:
- create XML output. This is done now with PDML (thanks guys, great 
job!); and PSML should do the job for the packet summary output
- create a stylesheet to transform the XML to HTML (JavaScript), 
complete re-write of the JavaScript code
- re-write the hethereal binary to include interfaces for capturing, 
choosing capture-files, etc.

I am actually working on the XSL part producing JavaScript code. That's 
quite a chunk, and I will make it available to the list as soon as I 
have something real to show. Right now, I can process the pure PDML 
output into JavaScript, but the tree-view is still missing. I hope that 
this will then clarify where still some work is missing and how anyone 
can help...

Probably I can give you some first results / a preview this weekend.

greetings,
carsten