Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Has anybody got the solution to AIX libpcap problem?
I believe I know something about this problem. Yesterday I noticed that
tcpdump and ethereal were not working giving me exactly the same error "do
not specify an existing file" and tried to figure out what the difference
was. I could get tcpdump to work by removing the "ethereal" directory under
/usr/local/lib, where some libraries are created when you build ethereal,
( make install ) although I am not quite sure if this is the exact solution
to the problem. Iam planning to work on it on Monday, as i dont want to
spoil my friday evening.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Guy Harris" <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Anand B" <anand@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: <ethereal-users@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2002 2:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-users] Has anybody got the solution to AIX libpcap
problem?
> On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 10:40:25PM +0800, Anand B wrote:
> > Excellent!! It worked !! I downloaded libpcap 0.7.1 source; built it
with
> > bpf and then built ethereal 0.9.4 using libpcap 0.7.1 and hurray -
ethereal
> > can capture outgoing packets as well.
>
> Cool.
>
> Unfortunately, the other guy who had problems with outgoing packets on
> AIX 4.3.3 when using libpcap-with-DLPI, Luke McKenna, reported, when
> *he* tried libpcap-with-BPF:
>
> Ok, I've done that.
> But now I cannot get tcpdump/ethereal to run.
>
> with tcpdump when I try
> "tcpdump -i en0", I get:
>
> "tcpdump: BIOCSETIF: en0: File exists"
>
> which looked similar to a problem somebody had with *AIX's* tcpdump
> (presumably using IBM's own code to use BPF):
>
> http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/199911/msg00171.html
>
> where it printed
>
> # tcpdump
> tcpdump: BIOCSETIF: en0: Do not specify an existing file.
>
> (which looks as if it's a fancier version of "File exists"; perhaps
> AIX's tcpdump sets the locale, and in the C locale the error for EEXIST
> is "File exists" while in various en_{pick your country that speaks some
> derivative of the Queen's English} locales it's "Do not specify an
> existing file").
>
> When Luke tried AIX's tcpdump, it wasn't all that great either:
>
> With the tcpdump that comes with aix I just typed "tcpdump"
> and it started going (but only seeing incoming packets).
>
> so perhaps one of the problems is that AIX's BPF sometimes just acts
> strangely. (Perhaps EEXIST means somebody else has already started
> sniffing on that device, although BSD's BPF appears not to have a
> problem with multiple processes snooping on the same network device, and
> EBUSY would have been the right error to return even if AIX's internals
> make it impossible to have multiple processes snooping on the same
> network device.)
>
