User Guide

Building and Installing Wireshark

1. Unpack the source from its gzip'd tar file. If you are using Linux, or your version of UNIX uses GNU

tar, you can use the following command:

tar zxvf wireshark-1.5-tar.gz

For other versions of UNIX, you will want to use the following commands:

gzip -d wireshark-1.5-tar.gz

tar xvf wireshark-1.5-tar

Note!

The pipeline gzip -dc wireshark-1.5-tar.gz | tar xvf - will work here as well.

Note!

If you have downloaded the Wireshark tarball under Windows, you may find that your

browser has created a file with underscores rather than periods in its file name.

2. Change directory to the Wireshark source directory.

3. Configure your source so it will build correctly for your version of UNIX. You can do this with the

following command:

./configure

If this step fails, you will have to rectify the problems and rerun configure. Troubleshooting hints are

provided in Section 2.6, “Troubleshooting during the install on Unix”.

4. Build the sources into a binary, with the make command. For example:

make

5. Install the software in its final destination, using the command:

make install

Once you have installed Wireshark with make install above, you should be able to run it by entering

wireshark.

2.5. Installing the binaries under UNIX

In general, installing the binary under your version of UNIX will be specific to the installation methods

used with your version of UNIX. For example, under AIX, you would use smit to install the Wireshark

binary package, while under Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) you would use setld.

2.5.1. Installing from rpm's under Red Hat and alike

Use the following command to install the Wireshark RPM that you have downloaded from the Wireshark

web site: