Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] Req: Information regarding wireshark file logging
Date Index · Thread Index · Other Months · All Mailing Lists
Date Prev · Date Next · Thread Prev · Thread Next
From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 31 May 2010 13:17:06 -0700
On May 31, 2010, at 6:54 AM, Douglas Ross wrote:

> I'd like to discuss a point about "temporary" files.
>  
> In my experience (Windows), ethereal/wireshark creates files in the location specified by the user (if not stdout).
> So they are "permanent".

As Jaap noted, the user doesn't have to specify a location - and, if they don't, it doesn't get written to the standard output.  (In fact, Ethereal/Wireshark never allowed the capture to be written to the standard output, and never will allow that; the capture has to exist in some form of storage as long as it's open.)

If the user doesn't specify a location, the packets are written to a file in a temporary file directory; if the user closes the capture, the file is removed.  It is a named file in the file system, so it's "permanent" in that sense, but it's removed when the capture is closed, so it's not "permanent" in that sense.