Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] error when tethereal reading STDIN as file (-r - )

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From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 16:40:10 -0700 (PDT)
> 	Now that I have the latest version of (t)ethereal running on my
> system I've another question.  When I pipe STDOUT of another packet capture
> program to STDIN of tethereal

Tethereal doesn't support reading from a pipe; the library that it and
Ethereal uses do a fair bit of seeking (yes, even in single-pass
programs like Tethereal; they seek around in order to figure out what
type of file it is and, in the case of libpcap files, which particular
hellish mutant variant of libpcap it is).

> 	However if I perform the same operation but substitute tcpdump it
> continues to function for as long as needed.

The library tcpdump uses to read capture files (libpcap) does support
reading from pipes, but doesn't support reading capture files of the
type that require seeking around to determine the type.