TCPDUMP commands in detail

NAME

tcpdump - dump traffic on a network

SYNOPSIS

tcpdump [ -AdDefIKlLnNOpqRStuUvxX ] [ -B buffer_size ] [ -c count ]

[ -C file_size ] [ -G rotate_seconds ] [ -F file ]

[ -i interface ] [ -m module ] [ -M secret ]

[ -r file ] [ -s snaplen ] [ -T type ] [ -w file ]

[ -W filecount ]

[ -E spi@ipaddr algo:secret,... ]

[ -y datalinktype ] [ -z postrotate-command ] [ -Z user ]
[ expression ]

DESCRIPTION

Tcpdump prints out a description of the contents of packets on a network interface that match the boolean expression. It can also be run with the -w flag, which causes it to save the packet data to a file for later analysis, and/or with the -r flag, which causes it to read from a saved packet file rather than to read packets from a network interface. In all cases, only packets that match expression will be processed by tcpdump.

Tcpdump will, if not run with the -c flag, continue capturing packets until it is interrupted by a SIGINT signal (generated, for example, by typing your interrupt character, typically control-C) or a SIGTERM signal (typically generated with the kill(1) command); if run with the -c flag, it will capture packets until it is interrupted by a SIGINT or SIGTERM signal or the specified number of packets have been processed.

When tcpdump finishes capturing packets, it will report counts of:

packets ``captured'' (this is the number of packets that tcpdump has received and processed);

packets ``received by filter'' (the meaning of this depends on the OS on which you're running tcpdump, and possibly on the way the OS was configured - if a filter was specified on the command line, on some OSes it counts packets regardless of whether they were matched by the filter expression and, even if they were matched by the filter expression, regardless of whether tcpdump has read and processed them yet, on other OSes it counts only packets that were matched by the filter expression regardless of whether tcpdump has read and processed them yet, and on other OSes it counts only packets that were matched by the filter expression and were processed by tcpdump);

packets ``dropped by kernel'' (this is the number of packets that were dropped, due to a lack of buffer space, by the packet capture mechanism in the OS on which tcpdump is running, if the OS reports that information to applications; if not, it will be reported as 0).

On platforms that support the SIGINFO signal, such as most BSDs (including Mac OS X) and Digital/Tru64 UNIX, it will report those counts when it receives a SIGINFO signal (generated, for example, by typing your ``status'' character, typically control-T, although on some platforms, such as Mac OS X, the ``status'' character is not set by default, so you must set it with stty(1) in order to use it) and will continue capturing packets.

Reading packets from a network interface may require that you have special privileges; see the pcap (3PCAP) man page for details. Reading a saved packet file doesn't require special privileges.

OPTIONS

-A

Print each packet (minus its link level header) in ASCII. Handy for capturing web pages.

-B

Set the operating system capture buffer size to buffer_size.

-c

Exit after receiving count packets.

-C

Before writing a raw packet to a savefile, check whether the file is currently larger than file_size and, if so, close the current savefile and open a new one. Savefiles after the first savefile will have the name specified with the -w flag, with a number after it, starting at 1 and continuing upward. The units of file_size are millions of bytes (1,000,000 bytes, not 1,048,576 bytes).

-d

Dump the compiled packet-matching code in a human readable form to standard output and stop.

-dd

Dump packet-matching code as a C program fragment.

-ddd

Dump packet-matching code as decimal numbers (preceded with a count).

-D

Print the list of the network interfaces available on the system and on which tcpdump can capture packets. For each network interface, a number and an interface name, possibly followed by a text description of the interface, is printed. The interface name or the number can be supplied to the -i flag to specify an interface on which to capture.

This can be useful on systems that don't have a command to list them (e.g., Windows systems, or UNIX systems lacking ifconfig -a); the number can be useful on Windows 2000 and later systems, where the interface name is a somewhat complex string.

The -D flag will not be supported if tcpdump was built with an older version of libpcap that lacks the pcap_findalldevs() function.

-e

Print the link-level header on each dump line.

-E

Use spi@ipaddr algo:secret for decrypting IPsec ESP packets that are addressed to addr and contain Security Parameter Index value spi. This combination may be repeated with comma or newline seperation.

Note that setting the secret for IPv4 ESP packets is supported at this time.

Algorithms may be des-cbc, 3des-cbc, blowfish-cbc, rc3-cbc, cast128-cbc, or none. The default is des-cbc. The ability to decrypt packets is only present if tcpdump was compiled with cryptography enabled.

secret is the ASCII text for ESP secret key. If preceeded by 0x, then a hex value will be read.

The option assumes RFC2406 ESP, not RFC1827 ESP. The option is only for debugging purposes, and the use of this option with a true `secret' key is discouraged. By presenting IPsec secret key onto command line you make it visible to others, via ps(1) and other occasions.

In addition to the above syntax, the syntax file name may be used to have tcpdump read the provided file in. The file is opened upon receiving the first ESP packet, so any special permissions that tcpdump may have been given should already have been given up.

-f

Print `foreign' IPv4 addresses numerically rather than symbolically (this option is intended to get around serious brain damage in Sun's NIS server --- usually it hangs forever translating non-local internet numbers).

The test for `foreign' IPv4 addresses is done using the IPv4 address and netmask of the interface on which capture is being done. If that address or netmask are not available, available, either because the interface on which capture is being done has no address or netmask or because the capture is being done on the Linux "any" interface, which can capture on more than one interface, this option will not work correctly.

-F

Use file as input for the filter expression. An additional expression given on the command line is ignored.

-G

If specified, rotates the dump file specified with the -w option every rotate_seconds seconds. Savefiles will have the name specified by -w which should include a time format as defined by strftime(3). If no time format is specified, each new file will overwrite the previous.

If used in conjunction with the -C option, filenames will take the form of `file'.

-i

Listen on interface. If unspecified, tcpdump searches the system interface list for the lowest numbered, configured up interface (excluding loopback). Ties are broken by choosing the earliest match.

On Linux systems with 2.2 or later kernels, an interface argument of ``any'' can be used to capture packets from all interfaces. Note that captures on the ``any'' device will not be done in promiscuous mode.

If the -D flag is supported, an interface number as printed by that flag can be used as the interface argument.

-I

Put the interface in "monitor mode"; this is supported only on IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi interfaces, and supported only on some operating systems.

Note that in monitor mode the adapter might disassociate from the network with which it's associated, so that you will not be able to use any wireless networks with that adapter. This could prevent accessing files on a network server, or resolving host names or network addresses, if you are capturing in monitor mode and are not connected to another network with another adapter.

This flag will affect the output of the -L flag. If -I isn't specified, only those link-layer types available when not in monitor mode will be shown; if -I is specified, only those link-layer types available when in monitor mode will be shown.

-K

Don't attempt to verify IP, TCP, or UDP checksums. This is useful for interfaces that perform some or all of those checksum calculation in hardware; otherwise, all outgoing TCP checksums will be flagged as bad.

-l

Make stdout line buffered. Useful if you want to see the data while capturing it. E.g.,
``tcpdump -l | tee dat'' or ``tcpdump -l > dat & tail -f dat''.

-L

List the known data link types for the interface, in the specified mode, and exit. The list of known data link types may be dependent on the specified mode; for example, on some platforms, a Wi-Fi interface might support one set of data link types when not in monitor mode (for example, it might support only fake Ethernet headers, or might support 802.11 headers but not support 802.11 headers with radio information) and another set of data link types when in monitor mode (for example, it might support 802.11 headers, or 802.11 headers with radio information, only in monitor mode).

-m

Load SMI MIB module definitions from file module. This option can be used several times to load several MIB modules into tcpdump.

-M

Use secret as a shared secret for validating the digests found in TCP segments with the TCP-MD5 option (RFC 2385), if present.

-n

Don't convert addresses (i.e., host addresses, port numbers, etc.) to names.

-N

Don't print domain name qualification of host names. E.g., if you give this flag then tcpdump will print ``nic'' instead of ``nic.ddn.mil''.

-O

Do not run the packet-matching code optimizer. This is useful only if you suspect a bug in the optimizer.

-p

Don't put the interface into promiscuous mode. Note that the interface might be in promiscuous mode for some other reason; hence, `-p' cannot be used as an abbreviation for `ether host {local-hw-addr} or ether broadcast'.

-q

Quick (quiet?) output. Print less protocol information so output lines are shorter.

-R

Assume ESP/AH packets to be based on old specification (RFC1825 to RFC1829). If specified, tcpdump will not print replay prevention field. Since there is no protocol version field in ESP/AH specification, tcpdump cannot deduce the version of ESP/AH protocol.

-r

Read packets from file (which was created with the -w option). Standard input is used if file is ``-''.

-S

Print absolute, rather than relative, TCP sequence numbers.

-s

Snarf snaplen bytes of data from each packet rather than the default of 65535 bytes. 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 capture the protocol information you're interested in. Setting snaplen to 0 sets it to the default of 65535, for backwards compatibility with recent older versions of tcpdump.

-T

Force packets selected by "expression" to be interpreted the specified type. Currently known types are aodv (Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector protocol), cnfp (Cisco NetFlow protocol), rpc(Remote Procedure Call), rtp (Real-Time Applications protocol), rtcp (Real-Time Applications control protocol), snmp (Simple Network Management Protocol), tftp (Trivial File Transfer Protocol),vat (Visual Audio Tool), and wb (distributed White Board).

-t

Don't print a timestamp on each dump line.

-tt

Print an unformatted timestamp on each dump line.

-ttt

Print a delta (micro-second resolution) between current and previous line on each dump line.

-tttt

Print a timestamp in default format proceeded by date on each dump line.

-ttttt

Print a delta (micro-second resolution) between current and first line on each dump line.

-u

Print undecoded NFS handles.

-U

Make output saved via the -w option ``packet-buffered''; i.e., as each packet is saved, it will be written to the output file, rather than being written only when the output buffer fills.

The -U flag will not be supported if tcpdump was built with an older version of libpcap that lacks the pcap_dump_flush() function.

-v

When parsing and printing, produce (slightly more) verbose output. For example, the time to live, identification, total length and options in an IP packet are printed. Also enables additional packet integrity checks such as verifying the IP and ICMP header checksum.

When writing to a file with the -w option, report, every 10 seconds, the number of packets captured.

-vv

Even more verbose output. For example, additional fields are printed from NFS reply packets, and SMB packets are fully decoded.

-vvv

Even more verbose output. For example, telnet SB ... SE options are printed in full. With -X Telnet options are printed in hex as well.

-w

Write the raw packets to file rather than parsing and printing them out. They can later be printed with the -r option. Standard output is used if file is ``-''. See pcap-savefile(5) for a description of the file format.

-W

Used in conjunction with the -C option, this will limit the number of files created to the specified number, and begin overwriting files from the beginning, thus creating a 'rotating' buffer. In addition, it will name the files with enough leading 0s to support the maximum number of files, allowing them to sort correctly.

Used in conjunction with the -G option, this will limit the number of rotated dump files that get created, exiting with status 0 when reaching the limit. If used with -C as well, the behavior will result in cyclical files per timeslice.

-x

When parsing and printing, in addition to printing the headers of each packet, print the data of each packet (minus its link level header) in hex. The smaller of the entire packet or snaplen bytes will be printed. Note that this is the entire link-layer packet, so for link layers that pad (e.g. Ethernet), the padding bytes will also be printed when the higher layer packet is shorter than the required padding.

-xx

When parsing and printing, in addition to printing the headers of each packet, print the data of each packet, including its link level header, in hex.

-X

When parsing and printing, in addition to printing the headers of each packet, print the data of each packet (minus its link level header) in hex and ASCII. This is very handy for analysing new protocols.

-XX

When parsing and printing, in addition to printing the headers of each packet, print the data of each packet, including its link level header, in hex and ASCII.

-y

Set the data link type to use while capturing packets to datalinktype.

-z

Used in conjunction with the -C or -G options, this will make tcpdump run " command file " where file is the savefile being closed after each rotation. For example, specifying -z gzip or -z bzip2 will compress each savefile using gzip or bzip2.

Note that tcpdump will run the command in parallel to the capture, using the lowest priority so that this doesn't disturb the capture process.

And in case you would like to use a command that itself takes flags or different arguments, you can always write a shell script that will take the savefile name as the only argument, make the flags & arguments arrangements and execute the command that you want.

-Z

Drops privileges (if root) and changes user ID to user and the group ID to the primary group of user.

This behavior can also be enabled by default at compile time.

expression

selects which packets will be dumped. If no expression is given, all packets on the net will be dumped. Otherwise, only packets for which expression is `true' will be dumped.
For the expression syntax, see pcap-filter(7).
Expression arguments can be passed to tcpdump as either a single argument or as multiple arguments, whichever is more convenient. Generally, if the expression contains Shell metacharacters, it is easier to pass it as a single, quoted argument. Multiple arguments are concatenated with spaces before being parsed.

EXAMPLES

To print all packets arriving at or departing from sundown:

tcpdump host sundown 

To print traffic between helios and either hot or ace:

tcpdump host helios and \( hot or ace \) 

To print all IP packets between ace and any host except helios:

tcpdump ip host ace and not helios 

To print all traffic between local hosts and hosts at Berkeley:

tcpdump net ucb-ether 

To print all ftp traffic through internet gateway snup: (note that the expression is quoted to prevent the shell from (mis-)interpreting the parentheses):

tcpdump 'gateway snup and (port ftp or ftp-data)' 

To print traffic neither sourced from nor destined for local hosts (if you gateway to one other net, this stuff should never make it onto your local net).

tcpdump ip and not net localnet 

To print the start and end packets (the SYN and FIN packets) of each TCP conversation that involves a non-local host.

tcpdump 'tcp[tcpflags] & (tcp-syn|tcp-fin) != 0 and not src and dst net localnet' 

To print all IPv4 HTTP packets to and from port 80, i.e. print only packets that contain data, not, for example, SYN and FIN packets and ACK-only packets. (IPv6 is left as an exercise for the reader.)

tcpdump 'tcp port 80 and (((ip[2:2] - ((ip[0]&0xf)<<2))>>2)) != 0)' 

To print IP packets longer than 576 bytes sent through gateway snup:

tcpdump 'gateway snup and ip[2:2] > 576' 

To print IP broadcast or multicast packets that were not sent via Ethernet broadcast or multicast:

tcpdump 'ether[0] & 1 = 0 and ip[16] >= 224' 

To print all ICMP packets that are not echo requests/replies (i.e., not ping packets):

tcpdump 'icmp[icmptype] != icmp-echo and icmp[icmptype] != icmp-echoreply' 

OUTPUT FORMAT

The output of tcpdump is protocol dependent. The following gives a brief description and examples of most of the formats.

Link Level Headers

If the '-e' option is given, the link level header is printed out. On Ethernets, the source and destination addresses, protocol, and packet length are printed.

On FDDI networks, the '-e' option causes tcpdump to print the `frame control' field, the source and destination addresses, and the packet length. (The `frame control' field governs the interpretation of the rest of the packet. Normal packets (such as those containing IP datagrams) are `async' packets, with a priority value between 0 and 7; for example, `async4'. Such packets are assumed to contain an 802.2 Logical Link Control (LLC) packet; the LLC header is printed if it is not an ISO datagram or a so-called SNAP packet.

On Token Ring networks, the '-e' option causes tcpdump to print the `access control' and `frame control' fields, the source and destination addresses, and the packet length. As on FDDI networks, packets are assumed to contain an LLC packet. Regardless of whether the '-e' option is specified or not, the source routing information is printed for source-routed packets.

On 802.11 networks, the '-e' option causes tcpdump to print the `frame control' fields, all of the addresses in the 802.11 header, and the packet length. As on FDDI networks, packets are assumed to contain an LLC packet.

(N.B.: The following description assumes familiarity with the SLIP compression algorithm described in RFC-1144.)

On SLIP links, a direction indicator (``I'' for inbound, ``O'' for outbound), packet type, and compression information are printed out. The packet type is printed first. The three types are ip, utcp, and ctcp. No further link information is printed for ip packets. For TCP packets, the connection identifier is printed following the type. If the packet is compressed, its encoded header is printed out. The special cases are printed out as *S+n and *SA+n, where n is the amount by which the sequence number (or sequence number and ack) has changed. If it is not a special case, zero or more changes are printed. A change is indicated by U (urgent pointer), W (window), A (ack), S (sequence number), and I (packet ID), followed by a delta (+n or -n), or a new value (=n). Finally, the amount of data in the packet and compressed header length are printed.

For example, the following line shows an outbound compressed TCP packet, with an implicit connection identifier; the ack has changed by 6, the sequence number by 49, and the packet ID by 6; there are 3 bytes of data and 6 bytes of compressed header:

O ctcp * A+6 S+49 I+6 3 (6) 

ARP/RARP Packets

Arp/rarp output shows the type of request and its arguments. The format is intended to be self explanatory. Here is a short sample taken from the start of an `rlogin' from host rtsg to host csam:

arp who-has csam tell rtsg arp reply csam is-at CSAM  

The first line says that rtsg sent an arp packet asking for the Ethernet address of internet host csam. Csam replies with its Ethernet address (in this example, Ethernet addresses are in caps and internet addresses in lower case).

This would look less redundant if we had done tcpdump -n:

arp who-has 128.3.254.6 tell 128.3.254.68 arp reply 128.3.254.6 is-at 02:07:01:00:01:c4 

If we had done tcpdump -e, the fact that the first packet is broadcast and the second is point-to-point would be visible:

RTSG Broadcast 0806  64: arp who-has csam tell rtsg CSAM RTSG 0806  64: arp reply csam is-at CSAM  

For the first packet this says the Ethernet source address is RTSG, the destination is the Ethernet broadcast address, the type field contained hex 0806 (type ETHER_ARP) and the total length was 64 bytes.

TCP Packets

(N.B.:The following description assumes familiarity with the TCP protocol described in RFC-793. If you are not familiar with the protocol, neither this description nor tcpdump will be of much use to you.)

The general format of a tcp protocol line is:

src > dst: flags data-seqno ack window urgent options  

Src and dst are the source and destination IP addresses and ports. Flags are some combination of S (SYN), F (FIN), P (PUSH), R (RST), W (ECN CWR) or E (ECN-Echo), or a single `.' (no flags).Data-seqno describes the portion of sequence space covered by the data in this packet (see example below). Ack is sequence number of the next data expected the other direction on this connection.Window is the number of bytes of receive buffer space available the other direction on this connection. Urg indicates there is `urgent' data in the packet. Options are tcp options enclosed in angle brackets (e.g., ).

Src, dst and flags are always present. The other fields depend on the contents of the packet's tcp protocol header and are output only if appropriate.

Here is the opening portion of an rlogin from host rtsg to host csam.

rtsg.1023 > csam.login: S 768512:768512(0) win 4096  csam.login > rtsg.1023: S 947648:947648(0) ack 768513 win 4096  rtsg.1023 > csam.login: . ack 1 win 4096 rtsg.1023 > csam.login: P 1:2(1) ack 1 win 4096 csam.login > rtsg.1023: . ack 2 win 4096 rtsg.1023 > csam.login: P 2:21(19) ack 1 win 4096 csam.login > rtsg.1023: P 1:2(1) ack 21 win 4077 csam.login > rtsg.1023: P 2:3(1) ack 21 win 4077 urg 1 csam.login > rtsg.1023: P 3:4(1) ack 21 win 4077 urg 1  

The first line says that tcp port 1023 on rtsg sent a packet to port login on csam. The S indicates that the SYN flag was set. The packet sequence number was 768512 and it contained no data. (The notation is `first:last(nbytes)' which means `sequence numbers first up to but not including last which is nbytes bytes of user data'.) There was no piggy-backed ack, the available receive window was 4096 bytes and there was a max-segment-size option requesting an mss of 1024 bytes.

Csam replies with a similar packet except it includes a piggy-backed ack for rtsg's SYN. Rtsg then acks csam's SYN. The `.' means no flags were set. The packet contained no data so there is no data sequence number. Note that the ack sequence number is a small integer (1). The first time tcpdump sees a tcp `conversation', it prints the sequence number from the packet. On subsequent packets of the conversation, the difference between the current packet's sequence number and this initial sequence number is printed. This means that sequence numbers after the first can be interpreted as relative byte positions in the conversation's data stream (with the first data byte each direction being `1'). `-S' will override this feature, causing the original sequence numbers to be output.

On the 6th line, rtsg sends csam 19 bytes of data (bytes 2 through 20 in the rtsg -> csam side of the conversation). The PUSH flag is set in the packet. On the 7th line, csam says it's received data sent by rtsg up to but not including byte 21. Most of this data is apparently sitting in the socket buffer since csam's receive window has gotten 19 bytes smaller. Csam also sends one byte of data to rtsg in this packet. On the 8th and 9th lines, csam sends two bytes of urgent, pushed data to rtsg.

If the snapshot was small enough that tcpdump didn't capture the full TCP header, it interprets as much of the header as it can and then reports ``[|tcp]'' to indicate the remainder could not be interpreted. If the header contains a bogus option (one with a length that's either too small or beyond the end of the header), tcpdump reports it as ``[bad opt]'' and does not interpret any further options (since it's impossible to tell where they start). If the header length indicates options are present but the IP datagram length is not long enough for the options to actually be there, tcpdump reports it as ``[bad hdr length]''.

Capturing TCP packets with particular flag combinations (SYN-ACK, URG-ACK, etc.)

There are 8 bits in the control bits section of the TCP header:

CWR | ECE | URG | ACK | PSH | RST | SYN | FIN

Let's assume that we want to watch packets used in establishing a TCP connection. Recall that TCP uses a 3-way handshake protocol when it initializes a new connection; the connection sequence with regard to the TCP control bits is

1) Caller sends SYN

2) Recipient responds with SYN, ACK

3) Caller sends ACK