Supported Input Formats

Libtrace supports reading from the following trace capture and storage formats:

Live Capture

• Endace DAG cards
• pcap interfaces
• Native Linux PF_PACKET interfaces
• WAG cards (internal WAND project)
• Native BSD BPF interfaces
• Receiving packets over a network via the RT protocol

Trace Formats

• pcap traces
• ERF (Extensible Record Format) traces
• Legacy DAG formats, such as those used in various Auckland tracesets
• WTF (WAG Trace Format) traces

Supported Output Formats

In addition, libtrace can write traces in the following formats:

• pcap traces
• ERF (Extensible Record Format) traces
• WTF (WAG Trace Format) traces
• pcap interfaces
• Native Linux PF_PACKET interfaces

Note that libtrace does not include support for writing packets to a network via the RT protocol. Documentation of the RT protocol can be found here? which should enable programmers to write their own RT server.

Also, currently there is no support for writing to native BSD BPF interfaces but this may be added in a future version of libtrace.

Format URIs

Libtrace input and output sources are specified using URIs which describe both the format and location of the trace, interface or device in question. Below is a definitive list of URIs for all the trace formats supported by libtrace.

Live pcap interface

pcapint:<interface>

pcap trace file

pcapfile:<filename>

Live DAG capture

dag:<DAG device location e.g. /dev/dag0>

ERF trace file

erf:<filename>

Native Linux interface

int:<interface>

Native BSD BPF interface

bpf:<interface>

RT protocol

rt:<host>:<port>

Legacy ATM

legacyatm:<filename>

Legacy Ethernet

legacyeth:<filename>

Legacy Packet over Sonet

legacypos:<filename>

Live WAG capture

wag:<WAG device location e.g. /dev/wag>

WTF trace file

wtf:<filename>

URI's that include a filename usually accept '-' to represent stdin, e.g. erf:- will read ERF records from stdin.