Wireshark privileges and bugs

I installed wireshark and noticed some strage behaviour.

When I start it up, it doesn’t ask for root password but simply starts it as my normal user… but I require root privileges to access the network interfaces, so it’s totally unusable without it.

If I start it up using root then I see the interfaces correctly, but there’s a bug that freezes the program. If I start the capture by Menu->Capture->Options then everything works, but if I go to Menu->Capture->Interfaces and start from there, the program freezes.

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Well, the last part may be true but the first is not. Starting as a
normal user makes complete sense because Wireshark is not ONLY a packet
capturing program… it can also be used to read existing captures from
files which requires no privileges at all except filesystem ones to read
the files. Starting as a normal user is correct, but starting as ‘root’
should also work. Hopefully somebody can help more with that side now.

Good luck.

Karalabe wrote:
> I installed wireshark and noticed some strage behaviour.
>
> When I start it up, it doesn’t ask for root password but simply starts
> it as my normal user… but I require root privileges to access the
> network interfaces, so it’s totally unusable without it.
>
> If I start it up using root then I see the interfaces correctly, but
> there’s a bug that freezes the program. If I start the capture by
> Menu->Capture->Options then everything works, but if I go to
> Menu->Capture->Interfaces and start from there, the program freezes.
>
>
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I have the same problem