Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] "cut short in the middle of a packet" issue

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 11:57:52 -0700
Prashanth wrote:

I am using wireshark to read in a .trc file that was generated from a fileserver (netapp) that generated dump in trc format for analysis.

"trc format" is just libpcap format.

In some instance i see the following:

pvenkatg@comet:~/work % /local/wireshark/bin/tshark -r vif1.trc -z 'ip_hosts,tree' -q
tshark: "vif1.trc" appears to have been cut short in the middle of a packet.

Did you stop the trace on the filer before reading the file? If not, that isn't guaranteed to work - there might be data in memory on the file that hasn't yet been written out to the file. That could cause this problem.

I have not copied the trc file from one OS to another. Is there a way i can have wireshark ignore such packets when it reads the trc file?

That message is printed for the last packet in the file; Wireshark/TShark already ignores it when it sees that problem. It doesn't ignore it *silently*, because it's not supposed to.