[RFC 0/4] alternative capture mechanism
Stephen Hemminger
stephen at networkplumber.org
Tue Jun 9 23:02:01 CEST 2026
This is an RFC for an alternative way to capture packets from a DPDK
application. I did brief demo of similar mechanism at DPDK summit but
this is more complete. Capture runs in the primary process and is driven
entirely over telemetry; no secondary process is involved.
A client asks the application to start capturing and passes it a file
descriptor to write to. The application writes pcapng to that descriptor.
A Wireshark extcap script is the intended front end, but the control path
is just telemetry and the output is just a pipe, so other front ends are
possible.
1/4 telemetry: let a command receive file descriptors from the client
2/4 capture: the library
3/4 test: functional test
4/4 app: the Wireshark extcap script and its documentation
Setup and usage are in doc/guides/tools/wireshark_extcap.rst.
Primary process only for now; secondary-process capture is possible as
follow-on. Posting as RFC to get feedback on the approach.
The extcap script is dual licensed (BSD-3-Clause OR GPL-2.0-or-later) as
it may be more useful in the Wireshark tree.
Stephen Hemminger (4):
telemetry: allow commands to receive file descriptors
capture: infrastructure wireshark packet capture
test: add test for capture hooks
usertools/dpdk-wireshark-extcap.py: script for external capture
MAINTAINERS | 4 +
app/test/meson.build | 1 +
app/test/test_capture.c | 365 +++++++++++
doc/guides/rel_notes/release_26_07.rst | 12 +
doc/guides/tools/index.rst | 1 +
doc/guides/tools/wireshark_extcap.rst | 155 +++++
lib/capture/capture.c | 821 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
lib/capture/capture_impl.h | 56 ++
lib/capture/filter.c | 108 ++++
lib/capture/meson.build | 19 +
lib/meson.build | 1 +
lib/telemetry/rte_telemetry.h | 66 ++
lib/telemetry/telemetry.c | 115 +++-
usertools/dpdk-wireshark-extcap.py | 274 +++++++++
14 files changed, 1986 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 app/test/test_capture.c
create mode 100644 doc/guides/tools/wireshark_extcap.rst
create mode 100644 lib/capture/capture.c
create mode 100644 lib/capture/capture_impl.h
create mode 100644 lib/capture/filter.c
create mode 100644 lib/capture/meson.build
create mode 100755 usertools/dpdk-wireshark-extcap.py
--
2.53.0
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