Re: Parsing ERF (pcap-like) format files

As I understand it, if you want to parse the native Endace files, you have to configure libpcap using

./configure --with-dag
[download]

It seems that the DAG libraries aren't opensource, and I couldn't find a download link for them. Without them, you can't do a live capture.

The DAG Project recommends libtrace. It understands ERF, but, once again, it can't do a live capture with out the DAG libraries.

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Re^2: Parsing ERF (pcap-like) format files
by sblanton (Sexton) on Mar 17, 2011 at 12:20 UTC

I've found that encapsulation and file formats are different. We've mislead ourselves on what's happening with the file formats. The capinfos program from Wireshark reveals that Endace creates:

File type:           Endace ERF capture
File encapsulation:  Endace Record File
[download]

Whereas after being processed through mergecap (also from Wireshark), the file format has changed to

File type:           Wireshark/tcpdump/... - libpcap
File encapsulation:  Endace Record File
[download]

libpcap can read the latter, but not the former. So, the wireshark programs can read the native Endace file format, but libpcap can not. libpcap can however capture live from DAG's and the code seems to be there (pcap-dag.c).

The code from wireshark to read the Endace files is in erf.h, erf.c, but there are so many conditionals in how the specifics of the file can look, that this looks better to be a small C project if I want to avoid manually processing the files before processing with Perl. It would be great to convert this to a perl module, but I just need the data and don't have the time or C->Perl experience to be an open source hero!

Thanks for the feedback!

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