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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/README.linux')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/README.linux | 36 |
1 files changed, 36 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/README.linux b/doc/README.linux new file mode 100644 index 00000000..143dff65 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/README.linux @@ -0,0 +1,36 @@ +Currently, libpcap supports packet capturing on Linux 2.6.27 and later; +earlier versions are not supported. + +You must configure 2.26.x kernels with the CONFIG_PACKET_MMAP option for +this protocol. 3.x and later kernels do not require that. + +Note that, by default, libpcap will, if libnl is present, build with it; +it uses libnl to support monitor mode on mac80211 devices. There is a +configuration option to disable building with libnl, but, if that option +is chosen, the monitor-mode APIs (as used by tcpdump's "-I" flag, and as +will probably be used by other applications in the future) won't work +properly on mac80211 devices. + +Linux's run-time linker allows shared libraries to be linked with other +shared libraries, which means that if an older version of a shared +library doesn't require routines from some other shared library, and a +later version of the shared library does require those routines, the +later version of the shared library can be linked with that other shared +library and, if it's otherwise binary-compatible with the older version, +can replace that older version without breaking applications built with +the older version, and without breaking configure scripts or the build +procedure for applications whose configure script doesn't use the +pcap-config script if they build with the shared library. (The build +procedure for applications whose configure scripts use the pcap-config +script if present will not break even if they build with the static +library.) + +Statistics: +Statistics reported by pcap are platform specific. The statistics +reported by pcap_stats on Linux are as follows: + +ps_recv Number of packets that were accepted by the pcap filter +ps_drop Number of packets that had passed filtering but were not + passed on to pcap due to things like buffer shortage, etc. + This is useful because these are packets you are interested in + but won't be reported by, for example, tcpdump output. |