Hi!
I am new to Wireshark dissector development, and encountered the following problem:
I am sending packtes, and the packets are fragmented.
At first, I wasn't aware of the API's internal packet re-assembly capabilities, so I tried to use a global buffer to accumulate the packets' payloads. At the last packet, I dissected the buffer (now containing an Ethernet packet) and added the result to the tree.
I did this just to find out the Wireshark not only calls the dissector when first encountering a packet, but also when I click it later... I didn't know that...
This is a problem since using an accumulating buffer relies on the packets being dissected in order. However, if I now click the in an un-ordered manner, the buffer accumulates stuff wrongly. Moreover, If I don't click ALL packets involved in a transaction, I only get part of the data.
So, I discovered the fragment_add_seq()
function and all that around it, but I still have the same problem:
My packets have *No seq number or frag number* !!
Hence, I cannot use such numbers as hash-table keys. I can only rely on transactions and fragments coming in ordered, but that's it.
Now, I want the fragments being added to the hash only when Wireshark first encounters a packet, but not again when I click it later. Using a simple global counter to produce keys will cause the same problem as before: When I later come back to observe packets a click them, they will be re-dissected, and now that the counter has a different value than before (it has advanced...), there will be no connection between a packet and the key produced for it in the first encounter.
I can think of all kinds of nasty tricks to solve this, but somehow I am sure there is an Wireshark provides an elegant way to achieve this.
Thanks!
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Use the source, Luke!