Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Automation of Ethereal in Command-line Mode

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 02 May 2005 12:50:58 -0700
tmadigan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Using Ethereal in command-line mode, can it be configured to
automatically produce the formatted report, currently produced by the
'save as' or 'Export' functions in the GUI mode?

"Save as" doesn't produce formatted reports (I don't remember whether it ever did, but it doesn't do so now) - it saves in various binary capture file formats.

If you want to do that on the command line, with no user interaction, use Tethereal - "-w" causes it to write a binary capture file, and "-F" can be used to override the default of libpcap format, if you have a reason to do that.

"Export" writes various output formats:

	XML - you can use Tethereal for that, with "-T pdml" or "-T psml";

Plain text - I'm not sure you can do *all* formats of that with Tethereal, but its default behavior is to produce a summary listing, with "-V" giving a detailed dissection;

	Postscript - see "Plain text", with "-T ps";

comma-separated values - I don't know whether Tethereal does that, but, if it doesn't, that should be added, e.g. with "-T csv".

There's no mechanism to get Ethereal to produce any of the "Export" reports automatically, and that's really Tethereal's job - if it can't do all those jobs, it should be changed to do so.