Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] crashing on OS X

From: "Kelly Martin" <kellymartin@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:01:41 -0500
On Jan 23, 2008 9:52 PM, Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jan 23, 2008, at 6:26 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> I built the latest Ethereal

The latest Ethereal is called "Wireshark". :-)

Oops too much ale last night, I was getting nostalgic. :)
 

> the quick-and-easy way using Mac Ports on my core 2 duo Leopard mac.
> It starts fine in X11 but crashes continually when starting to
> monitor en1 (the built-in WiFi) as user root. I don't recall the
> crash report at the moment but am wondering if this is a well-known
> bug already.

There is a well-known bug in which Wireshark crashes when you run it
on Leopard:

        http://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1953

You can pick up an updated version of the X server that will clear up
the problem; the bug indicates where to get it.

I installed the latest X11.app and that fixed the problem, Wireshark runs like a charm now. Thanks! The latest X server also seems to fix a couple of bugs I noticed, though it still doesn't work well with Spaces yet. Not a big deal.
 

VMWare Fusion will give your virtual machine a virtual Ethernet
interface, not a virtual wireless interface; it can go into
promiscuous mode, but I don't think that'll put the host's interface
into promiscuous mode.  I think you should be able to plug a USB
wireless adapter into your machine and tell Fusion to grab it and give
it to the virtual machine, in which case its driver should be able to
put it into promiscuous or monitor mode.  (I haven't tried that yet.)

I'm going to give that a shot soon, I've got an old Linksys USB 802.11b adapter that can work in promiscuous and monitor modes. If I can get it running with FreeBSD and VMWare Fusion I'll post here with an update. Parallels is a little weaker on the USB side of things... for example my Garmin GPS crashes the VM in Parallels, but not VMWare... 

Anyway, I am very happy things are up and running now!

kelly