Ethereal-users: [Ethereal-users] cli/script driven ethereal operation

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Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2006 14:52:06 +0000
I've been running ethereal manually (open the gui, select the interface,
capture some packets, export contents to an ascii file, run scripts against
the contents of the file).  I'd like to automate all of this.

Specifically, I'd like to run ethereal on a headless linux device, collect
and packets and then either write the packets in ascii to a file or write
to a file in native format and then be able to non-real-time but via a
script convert the libcap file contents to ascii.

Is the above possible?   What's the mechanism to get ethereal to run
without a display?  Is there a cli tool that take libcap and generates ascii 
output (with the same formatting options available in the ethereal
export gui interface)?

I expect (hope) so.  Didn't see anything which clearly indicated how to
do this in the man page.

Thanks