Ethereal-users: Re: [Ethereal-users] Using Ethereal to capture Bluetooth packets

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From: Guy Harris <gharris@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 00:28:14 -0700
cs00033 wrote:
Hi ! I would like to use Ethereal to capture Bluetooth packets transferred in a Bluetooth Network. What changes/additions I have to do in Ethereal ?

Ethereal doesn't include code that directly captures packets; it relies on libpcap to do so, so you'd first have to change libpcap.

This means you'd first need to ask tcpdump-workers@xxxxxxxxxxx for a link-layer type value for Bluetooth. You should indicate what the link-layer header will be - would it be some standard header, or would it include platform-dependent information?

You would then have to add to libpcap support for capturing Bluetooth packets on whatever OS you're trying to do this - are you doing this on Linux, one of the BSDs, Windows, or some other OS?

Once that's done, the code in Ethereal's Wiretap library would need to add support for the new link-layer type value - and a new Wiretap encapsulation type would have to be added.

Then, you'd need to add code to Ethereal to dissect the Bluetooth packets - or find some existing code.

The Affix Bluetooth stack for Linux:

	http://affix.sourceforge.net/

has Ethereal dissectors; see the Ethereal plugin link on

	http://affix.sourceforge.net/links.shtml

This Ethereal mailing list message:

	http://www.ethereal.com/lists/ethereal-dev/200310/msg00814.html

says some more about plugging into Ethereal; however, I don't think he ever contributed any Bluetooth dissectors to Ethereal.