Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] memory allocation assertion failure reading 219MB file with 1.2Million packets

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ravi Kondamuru wrote:

> My question:
> Is there a known limit on the number of packets that wireshark can deal 
> with in a single file?

The number of packets that Wireshark (or, I suspect, any network 
analyzer) can deal with is limited; due to a number of factors, the GUI 
widget used to implement the packet list display being one of them (it 
allocates a string for the text value in every column, which eats a lot 
of memory), Wireshark's limit might be lower than some other analyzers.

This is not a limit saying something such as "Wireshark can't read more 
than 1,227,399 packets"; the point at which it'd run out of memory 
depends on the contents of the packets.

However:

> or
> Should I look into my code for possible memory mis-management.

it is not inconceivable that there might be a leak in your code, so it 
might be worth looking at that - but don't necessarily expect that it'll 
fix the problem.