Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Ethereal doesn't start.

Note: This archive is from the project's previous web site, ethereal.com. This list is no longer active.

From: "Guy Harris" <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2004 14:58:55 -0800 (PST)
Hugh Burt said:
> I then installed Apple's X11 but when I double-click the Ethereal icon
> in the sw/bin/ folder, an X window opens followed by an Xterm window.

That sounds like a problem with Fink.  Perhaps they got confused and
thought you could make Ethereal into an application bundle; we don't
provide any form of Ethereal application bundle nor do we arrange to build
one on Mac OS X.

> What do I then type ? If I type sudo ethereal I get a "command not
> found" message.

Do

    sudo find / -name ethereal -print

which, if Fink actually installed Ethereal, should tell you where it hid
the Ethereal binary.

(Note, BTW, that, as Mac OS X is a BSD with BPF support, you can just do,
just before the first time you run Ethereal after rebooting your system

    sudo chown {your login name} /dev/bpf*

and then you can run Ethereal as yourself, rather than as root.)

> If I open a normal terminal window in the sw folder and type "sudo
> ethereal" I get the following : Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

That means that

    1) somehow, the shell running in the Terminal window can find ethereal
but the shell running in the xterm window can't

and

    2) DISPLAY isn't set in the terminal window.

To figure out what's going on with issue 1, what do the commands

    echo $PATH

and

    which ethereal

print, both in your xterm window and in your Terminal window?

To deal with issue 2, do

    setenv DISPLAY :0.0

in your Terminal window if your shell is the C shell or do

    DISPLAY=0.0; export DISPLAY

in your Terminal window if your shell is the Bourne shell or a compatible
shell such as the Bourne-again shell (the make your .profile or .login set
the environment variable DISPLAY, as per the above, if it's not already
set, so that you don't have to do that in any subsequently-opened Terminal
windows).