On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 12:55:00 -0700, Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Currently, the only plugins Ethereal supports are dissectors. At some
> point, it'd be nice to have plugin taps as well, although for that we'd
> either need to
>
> 1) have a way to have taps that don't directly have GUI code (such as a
> way to have a tap that computes some statistics and displays them just
> register a table to hold the statistics, with Tethereal printing them
> and Ethereal displaying them)
>
> or
>
> 2) keep different types of plugins separate, so Tethereal can load only
> the ones that lack GUI code.
>
> (We might want both, as the first of those would make it easier to write
> statistical taps and would let some of the Tethereal and Ethereal taps
> merge, and the second of those might be necessary if all dissectors ahve
> to be registered before all taps.)
OK the idea of writing a plugin must be thrown away in the dustbin if
I understand correctly.
But is it possible to expand the source tree with our own modules that
access the necessary data structures following the rules of the art
(using API-functions etc) and setup a client for our server that way.
The other solution we had in mind is the following: run ethereal,
start a capture session and write capture file to a named pipe (or
FIFO) and access the data frames with other tools (e.g. libpcapnav
included in netdude).
> It sounds as if what you really want is a way to make Ethereal
> "drivable" from outside, using e.g. COM (or something COM-based, as I
> think ActiveX is) on Windows, perhaps KParts in KDE and Bonbo in GNOME
> (if they allows this), Apple Events in OS X, etc..
>
> We currently don't have that. It'd need something in Ethereal's event
> loop so that it can respond to "events" from outside Ethereal as well as
> UI input events.
>
maybe we can cut back on functionality ;-) (hopefully) or we need to
look for another tool (netdude sounds interesting to us
http://netdude.sf.net/).
Sorry for all these questions but we're just looking for some starting
points to get this project going and take it to an higher level.
Thank you all,
Koen
--
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
--Rich Cook--