capinfos
(1)
Name
capinfos - Prints information about capture files
Synopsis
capinfos [ -a ] [ -A ] [ -b ] [ -B ] [ -c ] [ -C ] [ -d ]
[ -e ] [ -E ] [ -h ] [ -H ] [ -i ] [ -l ] [ -L ] [ -m ]
[ -M ] [ -N ] [ -o ] [ -q ] [ -Q ] [ -r ] [ -R ] [ -s ]
[ -S ] [ -t ] [ -T ] [ -u ] [ -x ] [ -y ] [ -z ] <infile>
...
Description
The Wireshark Network Analyzer CAPINFOS(1)
NAME
capinfos - Prints information about capture files
SYNOPSIS
capinfos [ -a ] [ -A ] [ -b ] [ -B ] [ -c ] [ -C ] [ -d ]
[ -e ] [ -E ] [ -h ] [ -H ] [ -i ] [ -l ] [ -L ] [ -m ]
[ -M ] [ -N ] [ -o ] [ -q ] [ -Q ] [ -r ] [ -R ] [ -s ]
[ -S ] [ -t ] [ -T ] [ -u ] [ -x ] [ -y ] [ -z ] <infile>
...
DESCRIPTION
Capinfos is a program that reads one or more capture files
and returns some or all available statistics (infos) of each
<infile> in one of two types of output formats: long or
table.
The long output is suitable for a human to read. The table
output is useful for generating a report that can be easily
imported into a spreadsheet or database.
The user specifies what type of output (long or table) and
which statistics to display by specifying flags (options)
that corresponding to the report type and desired infos. If
no options are specified, Capinfos will report all
statistics available in "long" format.
Options are processed from left to right order with later
options superseding or adding to earlier options.
Capinfos is able to detect and read the same capture files
that are supported by Wireshark. The input files don't need
a specific filename extension; the file format and an
optional gzip compression will be automatically detected.
Near the beginning of the DESCRIPTION section of
wireshark(1) or
http://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/wireshark.html
<http://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/wireshark.html> is
a detailed description of the way Wireshark handles this,
which is the same way Capinfos handles this.
OPTIONS
-a Displays the start time of the capture. Capinfos
considers the earliest timestamp seen to be the start
time, so the first packet in the capture is not
necessarily the earliest - if packets exist "out-of-
order", time-wise, in the capture, Capinfos detects
this.
-A Generate all infos. By default capinfos will display all
infos values for each input file, but enabling any of
the individual display infos options will disable the
generate all option.
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The Wireshark Network Analyzer CAPINFOS(1)
-b Separate infos with ASCII SPACE (0x20) characters. This
option is only useful when generating a table style
report (-T). The various info values will be separated
(delimited) from one another with a single ASCII SPACE
character.
NOTE: Since some of the header labels as well as some of
the value fields contain SPACE characters. This option
is of limited value unless one of the quoting options
(-q or -Q) is also specified.
-B Separate the infos with ASCII TAB characters. This
option is only useful when generating a table style
report (-T). The various info values will be separated
(delimited) from one another with a single ASCII TAB
character. The TAB character is the default delimiter
when -T style report is enabled.
-c Displays the number of packets in the capture file.
-C Cancel processing any additional files if and when
capinfos should fail to open an input file. By default
capinfos will attempt to open each and every file name
argument.
Note: An error message will be written to stderr
whenever capinfos fails to open a file regardless of
whether the -C option is specified or not. Upon exit,
capinfos will return an error status if any errors
occurred during processing.
-d Displays the total length of all packets in the file, in
bytes. This counts the size of the packets as they
appeared in their original form, not as they appear in
this file. For example, if a packet was originally 1514
bytes and only 256 of those bytes were saved to the
capture file (if packets were captured with a snaplen or
other slicing option), Capinfos will consider the packet
to have been 1514 bytes.
-e Displays the end time of the capture. Capinfos
considers the latest timestamp seen to be the end time,
so the last packet in the capture is not necessarily the
latest - if packets exist "out-of-order", time-wise, in
the capture, Capinfos detects this.
-E Displays the per-file encapsulation of the capture file.
-h Prints the help listing and exits.
-H Displays the SHA1, RIPEMD160, and MD5 hashes for the
file.
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The Wireshark Network Analyzer CAPINFOS(1)
-i Displays the average data rate, in bits/sec
-k Displays the capture comment. For pcapng files, this is
the comment from the section header block.
-l Display the snaplen (if any) for a file. snaplen (if
available) is determined from the capture file header
and by looking for truncated records in the capture
file.
-L Generate long report. Capinfos can generate two
different styles of reports. The "long" report is the
default style of output and is suitable for a human to
use.
-m Separate the infos with comma (,) characters. This
option is only useful when generating a table style
report (-T). The various info values will be separated
(delimited) from one another with a single comma ","
character.
-M Print raw (machine readable) numeric values in long
reports. By default capinfos prints human-readable
values with SI suffixes. Table reports (-T) always print
raw values.
-N Do not quote the infos. This option is only useful when
generating a table style report (-T). Excluding any
quoting characters around the various values and using a
TAB delimiter produces a very "clean" table report that
is easily parsed with CLI tools. By default infos are
NOT quoted.
-o Displays "True" if packets exist in strict chronological
order or "False" if one or more packets in the capture
exists "out-of-order" time-wise.
-q Quote infos with single quotes ('). This option is only
useful when generating a table style report (-T). When
this option is enabled, each value will be encapsulated
within a pair of single quote (') characters. This
option (when used with the -m option) is useful for
generating one type of CSV style file report.
-Q Quote infos with double quotes ("). This option is only
useful when generating a table style report (-T). When
this option is enabled, each value will be encapsulated
within a pair of double quote (") characters. This
option (when used with the -m option) is useful for
generating the most common type of CSV style file
report.
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The Wireshark Network Analyzer CAPINFOS(1)
-r Do not generate header record. This option is only
useful when generating a table style report (-T). If
this option is specified then no header record will be
generated within the table report.
-R Generate header record. This option is only useful when
generating a table style report (-T). A header is
generated by default. A header record (if generated) is
the first line of data reported and includes labels for
all the columns included within the table report.
-s Displays the size of the file, in bytes. This reports
the size of the capture file itself.
-S Display the start and end times as seconds since January
1, 1970. Handy for synchronizing dumps using editcap -t.
-t Displays the capture type of the capture file.
-T Generate a table report. A table report is a text file
that is suitable for importing into a spreadsheet or
database. Capinfos can build a tab delimited text file
(the default) or several variations on Comma-separated
values (CSV) files.
-u Displays the capture duration, in seconds. This is the
difference in time between the earliest packet seen and
latest packet seen.
-x Displays the average packet rate, in packets/sec
-y Displays the average data rate, in bytes/sec
-z Displays the average packet size, in bytes
EXAMPLES
To see a description of the capinfos options use:
capinfos -h
To generate a long form report for the capture file
mycapture.pcap use:
capinfos mycapture.pcap
To generate a TAB delimited table form report for the
capture file mycapture.pcap use:
capinfos -T mycapture.pcap
To generate a CSV style table form report for the capture
file mycapture.pcap use:
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The Wireshark Network Analyzer CAPINFOS(1)
capinfos -T -m -Q mycapture.pcap
or
capinfos -TmQ mycapture.pcap
To generate a TAB delimited table style report with just the
filenames, capture type, capture encapsulation type and
packet count for all the pcap files in the current directory
use:
capinfos -T -t -E -c *.pcap
or
capinfos -TtEs *.pcap
Note: The ability to use of filename globbing characters are
a feature of *nix style command shells.
To generate a CSV delimited table style report of all infos
for all pcap files in the current directory and write it to
a text file called mycaptures.csv use:
capinfos -TmQ *.pcap >mycaptures.csv
The resulting mycaptures.csv file can be easily imported
into spreadsheet applications.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+---------------------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+---------------------------------------+
|Availability | diagnostic/wireshark/wireshark-common |
+---------------+---------------------------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+---------------------------------------+
SEE ALSO
pcap(3), wireshark(1), mergecap(1), editcap(1), tshark(1),
dumpcap(1), pcap-filter(5) or tcpdump(1)
NOTES
Capinfos is part of the Wireshark distribution. The latest
version of Wireshark can be found at
<http://www.wireshark.org>.
HTML versions of the Wireshark project man pages are
available at: http://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages
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The Wireshark Network Analyzer CAPINFOS(1)
<http://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages>.
AUTHORS
Original Author
-------- ------
Ian Schorr <ian[AT]ianschorr.com>
Contributors
------------
Gerald Combs <gerald[AT]wireshark.org>
Jim Young <jyoung[AT]gsu.edu>
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://www.wireshark.org/download/src/all-
versions/wireshark-1.10.7.tar.bz2
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.wireshark.org/.
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