On Wed, 1 Mar 2006, richard white wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I've run into a problem that I don't have the experience to find an elegant
> and secure way around, and that did not seem to be covered in the wikis.
>
> Ethereal info:-
> Version 0.10.13 (C) 1998-2005 Gerald Combs <gerald@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Compiled with GTK+ 2.8.10, with GLib 2.8.6, with libpcap 0.9.4, with libz
> 1.2.3,
> with libpcre 6.4, without UCD-SNMP or Net-SNMP, with ADNS.
>
> Running with libpcap version 0.9.4 on Linux 2.4.27-2-386.
>
> ethereal was nstalled from debian testing, and runs fine, except that I have
> to jump through hoops to do captures. It's a privilige, rather than a system
> problem (tcpdump works fine).
That is correct.
> This is a production machine, running kde as a normal user and I'd like to run
> ethereal from that environment. Ethereal runs fine, if started from an
> xterm, but can't of course do captures because the xserver is not running
> with root privs. I CAN do captures if I run ethereal under a second xserver
> started as root.
That is Not Recommended(SM).
> but I don't like the security implications of that (and it's
> a nuisance). The wiki refs to privilege issues with /dev/bpf* don't seem to
> apply to linux.
>
> I'm stuck, and suspect I'm missing something obvious... can anyone help,
> please?
When you installed the Ethereal Debian Package, an entry into the KDE menu
'Internet' should have been added. If it's not there you could go to
'Settings' and select 'Menu update' to have it look for it. If all this
fails you can create an entry there yourself using the menu editor.
The trick you're looking for is to check the box 'execute as a different
user' and then leaving the user name empty. This will launch a dialog for
you to enter the root password whenever you start Ethereal through that
menu option. If you choose to ignore the root password it will startup
Ethereal with the normal user privileges, so you can safely open stored
capture files, etc. If you do enter the root password it will launch
Ethereal as root user.
Good luck,
Jaap