1Installing Wireshark on FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/DragonFly BSD
2========================================================================
3
4     1. Extra packages required
5     2. Compiling Wireshark
6     3. Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) requirement
7     4. Running Wireshark as a non-root user
8
9
101. Extra packages required
11---------------------------
12Wireshark requires a number of additional programs to function.
13Install the latest versions of the following programs before compiling:
14
15The easiest way to install these is by using your operating system's
16ports or packages system.  If you prefer to build from source, the programs
17can be found at the following sites:
18
19    glib 2.32 or later:
20         ftp.gnome.org:/pub/gnome/sources/glib/
21	 http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/glib/
22
23    pkgconfig:
24         http://pkgconfig.freedesktop.org/releases/
25
26    python 3.4 or later:
27         https://www.python.org/downloads/source/
28
29If you want to use the Wireshark GUI, install one or both of these toolkits:
30
31    Qt 5.3 or later:
32	 http://download.qt-project.org/official_releases/qt/
33
34
35(These programs may require additional dependencies)
36
37Additional programs can be used to enhance Wireshark's functionality.
38These can be found by typing ./configure --help or looking at the output
39at the end of running the configure script.
40
41
422. Compiling Wireshark
43-----------------------
44To compile Wireshark with the default options, run configure, make and
45make install (you may have to run "autogen.sh" first):
46
47     ./configure
48     make
49     make install
50
51The configure and make steps can be run as a non-root user and you can
52run Wireshark from the compilation directory itself.  You must run make
53install as root in order to copy the program to the proper directories.
54
55
563. Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) requirement
57--------------------------------------------
58In order to capture packets (with Wireshark/TShark, tcpdump, or any
59other packet capture program) on a BSD system, your kernel must have the
60Berkeley Packet Filter mechanism enabled.  The default kernel
61configurations in recent versions of BSD systems have this enabled
62already.  To verify the bpf device is present, look in the /dev
63directory:
64
65    ls -l /dev/bpf*
66
67You should see one or more bpf devices listed similar to this:
68
69    crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  90 Aug 10 21:05 /dev/bpf0
70    crw-------  1 root  wheel    0,  91 Aug 10 21:05 /dev/bpf1
71
72Packet-capturing programs will pick the first bpf device that's not in
73use.  Recent versions of most BSDs will create bpf devices as needed, so
74you don't have to configure the number of devices that will be
75available.
76
774. Running wireshark as a non-root user
78-------------------------------------------
79Since the bpf devices are read-only by the owner (root), you normally
80have to run packet capturing programs such as Wireshark as root.  It is
81safer to run programs as a non-root user if possible.  To run Wireshark
82as a non-root user, you must change the permissions on the bpf device(s).
83If you are the only user that needs to use Wireshark, the easiest way
84is to change the owner of each bpf device to your username.  You can also
85add the read/write ability to the group (typically wheel) and add users
86that need to use Wireshark to the wheel group.  Check your operating
87system's documentation on how to make permanent these changes as they
88are often reset upon reboot; if /dev is implemented with devfs, it might
89be possible to configure devfs to create all bpf devices owned by a
90particular user and/or group and with particular permissions.  In
91FreeBSD 6.0 and later this can be done by creating an /etc/devfs.rules
92file with content such as
93
94	[localrules=10]
95	add path 'bpf*' {mode and permissions}
96
97where "mode and permissions" can include clauses such as
98
99	mode {octal permissions}
100
101to set the permissions on the device (e.g., "mode 0660" to set the
102permissions to rw-rw-r--),
103
104	user {user}
105
106to set the user who owns the device, or
107
108	group {group}
109
110to set the group that owns the device and adding a line such as
111
112	devfs_system_ruleset=localrules
113
114to /etc/rc.conf.  For example, an /etc/devfs.rules file with
115
116	[localrules=10]
117	add path 'bpf*' mode 0660 group wheel
118
119will grant read and write permissions on all BPF devices to all users in
120the "wheel" group.
121