Wireshark-bugs: [Wireshark-bugs] [Bug 397] "unknown error" prevents load in kde with pppoe on ni
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2006 03:22:38 +0000 (GMT)
http://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=397


jeff.morriss@xxxxxxxxxxx changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
         Resolution|                            |INVALID




------- Comment #9 from jeff.morriss@xxxxxxxxxxx  2006-08-07 03:22 GMT -------
(In reply to comment #8)
> I built Wireshark 0.99.2 from the tarball from wireshark.org.  When I run that,
> it simply starts up, without any dialog asking whether I want to enter a root
> password or run unpriveleged.

That's normal because Wireshark doesn't provide this popup.  Redhat (on which
CentOS is based) makes use of a program called 'consolehelper' to run programs
that (frequently) need to be root to run but they don't want to install
setuid-root (or, in the case of Wireshark which _can't_ be installed setuid
root because Gtk won't let it run).

For example, "/usr/bin/ethereal" (which is usually early in most normal users'
$PATH) is just a symlink to 'consolehelper':

mozart [~/]> ll /usr/bin/ethereal
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Apr 27 20:11 /usr/bin/ethereal -> consolehelper*

whereas "/usr/sbin/ethereal" (which is usually early in 'root's $PATH) is the
Real Thing(tm):

mozart [~/]> ll /usr/sbin/ethereal
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1465824 Apr 25 21:38 /usr/sbin/ethereal*

> I am still seeing the problem with the current CentOS 4 version of Ethereal. 
> The source RPM for the build with the problem is:
> 
> http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos-4/4/updates/SRPMS/ethereal-0.99.0-EL4.2.src.rpm

Whatever the problem is, I'm 95% sure it's a problem with 'consolehelper', not
Ethereal/Wireshark.

You could verify this yourself by running "/usr/sbin/ethereal" (or
"/usr/sbin/wireshark") as a normal user and verifying it comes up OK (without
the popup from 'consolehelper', of course).

Actually, reading the 'strace' output you provided, "/usr/bin/ethereal" (aka
'consolehelper') never even got around to forking or exec'ing the real
'ethereal' so now I'm 99.9% sure it's a 'consolehelper' bug.  You might want to
report this to Redhat instead.

BTW, I just tried "Run Unprivileged" on RHEL AS3 Update 6 and it worked fine
for me, not sure why, maybe Redhat already fixed it?  The changelog for the
'usermode' package doesn't give any hints, though...


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