Ethereal-users: RE: [Ethereal-users] Ethereal from the Command Line

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From: Biot Olivier <Olivier.Biot@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:27:11 +0100
| From: Marco van den Bovenkamp
| 
| Phillip Thompson wrote:
| 
| > Am I asking the impossible in trying to run ethereal from 
| the command
| > line. It works fine from within KDE or if I shell out to a terminal
| > session. If I try to run ethereal from a linux command line 
| prompt all I
| > get is  the following line
| > 
| > Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
| > 
| > Have I missed something ?
| 
| Yes, the fact that Ethereal is a graphical application and needs X to 
| run (on Unixes at least). If you don't have that and are running on a 
| bare command line, use tethereal.

you have to define a valid display on which Ethereal can be rendered
(this is an X Server's display). In order to do so, you must:

1. Know the host name or IP address of the PC on which you're
   invoking Ethereal
2. Know the host name or IP address of the X server on which you want
   to tun Ethereal
3. On the host from step 2, run xhost +<address from host from step 1>
4. On the host from step 1, add the DISPLAY variable to your environment.
   In bash:
	$ export DISPLAY=<address from host from step 2>:0.0
5. On this same host, run ethereal. You should see Ethereal appear on the
   specified display.

Example: run Ethereal from machine "console" on the X server of machine
"xserver":
xserver$ xhost +console
console$ export DISPLAY=xserver:0.0
console$ ./ethereal -r /tmp/capture.pcap

Regards,

Olivier