pcap_create (3)

Leading comments

 Copyright (c) 1994, 1996, 1997
	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

 Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
 modification, are permitted provided that: (1) source code distributions
 retain the above copyright notice and this paragraph in its entirety, (2)
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(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man3/pcap_create.3pcap".)

NAME

pcap_create - create a live capture handle

SYNOPSIS

#include <pcap/pcap.h>

char errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE];

pcap_t *pcap_create(const char *source, char *errbuf);

DESCRIPTION

pcap_create() is used to create a packet capture handle to look at packets on the network. source is a string that specifies the network device to open; on Linux systems with 2.2 or later kernels, a source argument of "any" or NULL can be used to capture packets from all interfaces.

The returned handle must be activated with pcap_activate() before packets can be captured with it; options for the capture, such as promiscuous mode, can be set on the handle before activating it.

RETURN VALUE

pcap_create() returns a pcap_t * on success and NULL on failure. If NULL is returned, errbuf is filled in with an appropriate error message. errbuf is assumed to be able to hold at least PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE chars.

SEE ALSO

pcap(3PCAP), pcap_activate(3PCAP)