Wireshark · Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] explicitly stop capture with Tshark

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Feb 3, 2009, at 3:53 PM, Joshua (Shiwei) Zhao wrote:

> I know that with tshark we can preset an autostop parameter (a  
> duration or number of captured packets). However, if our target  
> capture is quite dynamic, is there a way to nicely and explicitly  
> stop the capture? We can kill the process but many times the capture  
> buffer couldn't be correctly flushed into a file before it's killed.

That depends on how it's killed.

On UN*X, sending it SIGTERM, with, for example, the "kill" command,  
will cause it to cleanly exit, flushing out the buffered packets.   
Sending it a SIGINT by, for example, typing ^C to it while it's  
running in the foreground will also cause it to cleanly exit.

On Windows, currently the only way to get it to cleanly exit is to  
send it a "control-C event"; I don't know whether there's any way to  
do that other than to type ^C to it while it's running.