Friday, July 22, 2005
Ethereal On Mac OS X
Categories: Art • Life • Technology
I recently spent some time compiling Ethereal on some of the Macintosh’s at work. Ethereal is a powerful network protocol analyzer (otherwise known as a packet sniffer) that we already used on all of the PC’s and Linux machines.
There isn’t a Mac OS X native version of Ethereal yet so it has to be compiled to launch under Apples X11 implementation. This works fine except it isn’t really friendly for user since there is no way to launch directly into Ethereal (a user would have to launch X11 and then type sudo /sw/bin/ethereal into a terminal).
I knew I couldn’t be the only Mac user to have run into this issue again so I went to the usual place one goes in need of information.
I promptly found XDroplets a very slick set of Applescripts that allow you to create launchers for X11 applications (thank you Martin Fuhrer).
After using the XDroplets setup app to create a launcher for Ethereal I had everything working.
Users could double click on an icon named Ethereal which would ask for their admin password and then launch Ethereal under Apple’s X11 environment. The only thing missing was an icon. The default Applescript icon wasn’t doing it for me. In fact it annoyed the heck out of me. In fact, well, I think some fellow Mac users might understand.
So I went in search of an OS X Ethereal icon.
Turns out one doesn’t exist.
So I went home today yesterday and made one myself.
Posted by Jamie at 09:03 AM
comments
hi i don’t know how to compil programs, is there anny way i can get a precompiled copy of this program?
Posted by Redeemer691 on July 29, 2005 at 01:05 PM
Because of the nature of how a unix app works (dependencies) it isn’t as simple as sending you the binary of Ethereal because it relies on a whole list of other binaries and libraries to do its job. I could give you directions on how to compile it yourself though.
I’ve been thinking on making an entry on how to install it anyway since I’ve been getting tons of hits from people searching for Ethereal and OS X. Obviously I’m not the only one who was wanting it. And there are some little pitfalls that I banged my head against for hours when I first tried getting it all to work.
Would you be interested in that?
Posted by Jamie on July 29, 2005 at 01:30 PM
By the way you typed your email address in wrong. I fixed it so you will get notification of my reply.
Posted by Jamie on July 29, 2005 at 01:33 PM
yes im very interested in that thanx very much
Posted by Redeemer691 on July 31, 2005 at 02:56 PM
I finished the entry on compiling Ethereal hopefully it will help you out.
Posted by Jamie on August 03, 2005 at 12:09 AM
(You may have already recieved this, but I had a browser problem after submitting so I tried again)
Hey, Great Post.
Just curious to know what type of device you use for packet capture and if you have used a wireless card which card have you used(given the limited use of Airport Extreme Cards).
-Neil-
Posted by Neil on August 08, 2005 at 02:14 PM
hey jamie,
just thought I’d note that you are Thanked in the ReadMe for aquaethereal application.
nice that you put the instructions for installing ethereal.. been wanting to have that on the os x machine I’m working with.
larry
Posted by Larry on July 07, 2006 at 04:32 PM