Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Error running ethereal on AIX 5.1

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 12:36:23 -0700
On Fri, Sep 13, 2002 at 12:17:17PM -0700, Jon Houg wrote:
> Thanks for the response.  Sorry, the version of libpcap I'm using is version
> 0.6.1.0 from "www.bullfreeware.com".

It looks like that's a version that doesn't always work on AIX.  The
only version I suspect always works on AIX is the version that I think
comes with AIX 5.x (and I'm assuming here that *it* always works on AIX,
which might not be true); unfortunately, that version is
source-code-incompatible with every other version of libpcap on the
planet, thanks to some "clever" AIX developer who changed the way
libpcap works, in an incompatible fashion.

The current version of Ethereal has code that at least attempts to
detect AIX's incompatible libpcap and compensate for it; to use that,
you'd have to perhaps un-install the third-party libpcap, install
"development" versions of GTK+ and GLib (versions that include header
files and the like; you might have to just download source from
www.gtk.org and compile that, I don't know) and perhaps install some
part of AIX to include a "development" version of its libpcap (I don't
know what part that would be), and then download Ethereal source and
compile it.