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Old 29th December 2009
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Carpetsmoker Carpetsmoker is offline
Real Name: Martin
Tcpdump Spy
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Netherlands
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As a related addition, if you run tcpdump on FreeBSD with the default settings (Possibly also other BSD's, can't recall running into this with OpenBSD though) you will likely run into messages such as:
Code:
tcp 12 [bad hdr length 8 - too short, < 20]
Which can be solved by increasing the snaplen with -s, 256 should be more than enough (Default being 68):
Code:
tcpdump -s 256 -i pflog0
The tcpdump(1) manpage gives an explanation of this option and also explains how it relates to j65nko's post:
Code:
       -s     Snarf  snaplen  bytes  of  data from each packet rather than the
              default of 68 (with SunOSâs NIT, the minimum  is  actually  96).
              68  bytes is adequate for IP, ICMP, TCP and UDP but may truncate
              protocol information from  name  server  and  NFS  packets  (see
              below).   Packets  truncated  because  of a limited snapshot are
              indicated in the output with [|proto], where  proto  is  the
              name of the protocol level at which the truncation has occurred.
              Note that taking larger snapshots both increases the  amount  of
              time it takes to process packets and, effectively, decreases the
              amount of packet buffering.  This may cause packets to be  lost.
              You  should  limit snaplen to the smallest number that will capâ
              ture the protocol information  youâre  interested  in.   Setting
              snaplen  to 0 means use the required length to catch whole packâ
              ets.
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