1CAPINFOS(1)                                                        CAPINFOS(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       capinfos - Prints information about capture files
7

SYNOPSIS

9       capinfos [ -a ] [ -A ] [ -b ] [ -B ] [ -c ] [ -C ] [ -d ] [ -D ] [ -e ]
10       [ -E ] [ -F ] [ -h ] [ -H ] [ -i ] [ -I ] [ -k ] [ -K ] [ -l ] [ -L ]
11       [ -m ] [ -M ] [ -n ] [ -N ] [ -o ] [ -q ] [ -Q ] [ -r ] [ -R ] [ -s ]
12       [ -S ] [ -t ] [ -T ] [ -u ] [ -v ] [ -x ] [ -y ] [ -z ] <infile> ...
13

DESCRIPTION

15       Capinfos is a program that reads one or more capture files and returns
16       some or all available statistics (infos) of each <infile> in one of two
17       types of output formats: long or table.
18
19       The long output is suitable for a human to read. The table output is
20       useful for generating a report that can be easily imported into a
21       spreadsheet or database.
22
23       The user specifies what type of output (long or table) and which
24       statistics to display by specifying flags (options) that corresponding
25       to the report type and desired infos. If no options are specified,
26       Capinfos will report all statistics available in "long" format.
27
28       Options are processed from left to right order with later options
29       superseding or adding to earlier options.
30
31       Capinfos is able to detect and read the same capture files that are
32       supported by Wireshark. The input files don’t need a specific filename
33       extension; the file format and an optional gzip, zstd or lz4
34       compression will be automatically detected. Near the beginning of the
35       DESCRIPTION section of wireshark(1) or
36       https://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/wireshark.html is a detailed
37       description of the way Wireshark handles this, which is the same way
38       Capinfos handles this.
39

OPTIONS

41       -a
42
43           Displays the start time of the capture. Capinfos considers the
44           earliest timestamp seen to be the start time, so the first packet
45           in the capture is not necessarily the earliest - if packets exist
46           "out-of-order", time-wise, in the capture, Capinfos detects this.
47
48       -A
49
50           Generate all infos. By default Capinfos will display all infos
51           values for each input file, but enabling any of the individual
52           display infos options will disable the generate all option.
53
54       -b
55
56           Separate infos with ASCII SPACE (0x20) characters. This option is
57           only useful when generating a table style report (-T). The various
58           info values will be separated (delimited) from one another with a
59           single ASCII SPACE character.
60
61               Note
62               Since some of the header labels as well as some of the value
63               fields contain SPACE characters. This option is of limited
64               value unless one of the quoting options (-q or -Q) is also
65               specified.
66
67       -B
68
69           Separate the infos with ASCII TAB characters. This option is only
70           useful when generating a table style report (-T). The various info
71           values will be separated (delimited) from one another with a single
72           ASCII TAB character. The TAB character is the default delimiter
73           when -T style report is enabled.
74
75       -c
76
77           Displays the number of packets in the capture file.
78
79       -C
80
81           Cancel processing any additional files if and when Capinfos fails
82           to open an input file or gets an error reading an input file. By
83           default Capinfos will continue processing files even if it gets an
84           error opening or reading a file.
85
86           Note: An error message will be written to stderr whenever Capinfos
87           fails to open a file or gets an error reading from a file
88           regardless whether the -C option is specified or not. Upon exit,
89           Capinfos will return an error status if any errors occurred during
90           processing.
91
92       -d
93
94           Displays the total length of all packets in the file, in bytes.
95           This counts the size of the packets as they appeared in their
96           original form, not as they appear in this file. For example, if a
97           packet was originally 1514 bytes and only 256 of those bytes were
98           saved to the capture file (if packets were captured with a snaplen
99           or other slicing option), Capinfos will consider the packet to have
100           been 1514 bytes.
101
102       -D
103
104           Displays a count of the number of decryption secrets in the file.
105           This information is not available in table format.
106
107       -e
108
109           Displays the end time of the capture. Capinfos considers the latest
110           timestamp seen to be the end time, so the last packet in the
111           capture is not necessarily the latest - if packets exist
112           "out-of-order", time-wise, in the capture, Capinfos detects this.
113
114       -E
115
116           Displays the per-file encapsulation of the capture file.
117
118       -F
119
120           Displays additional capture file information.
121
122       -h|--help
123
124           Prints the help listing and exits.
125
126       -H
127
128           Displays the SHA256, RIPEMD160, and SHA1 hashes for the file. SHA1
129           output may be removed in the future.
130
131       -i
132
133           Displays the average data rate, in bits/sec
134
135       -I
136
137           Displays detailed capture file interface information. This
138           information is not available in table format.
139
140       -k
141
142           Displays the capture comment. For pcapng files, this is the comment
143           from the section header block.
144
145       -K
146
147           Use this option to suppress printing capture comments. By default
148           capture comments are enabled. Capture comments are relatively
149           freeform and might contain embedded new-line characters and/or
150           other delimiting characters making it harder for a human or machine
151           to easily parse the Capinfos output. Excluding capture comments can
152           aid in post-processing of output.
153
154       -l
155
156           Display the snaplen (if any) for a file. snaplen (if available) is
157           determined from the capture file header and by looking for
158           truncated records in the capture file.
159
160       -L
161
162           Generate long report. Capinfos can generate two different styles of
163           reports. The "long" report is the default style of output and is
164           suitable for a human to use.
165
166       -m
167
168           Separate the infos with comma (,) characters. This option is only
169           useful when generating a table style report (-T). The various info
170           values will be separated (delimited) from one another with a single
171           comma "," character.
172
173       -M
174
175           Print raw (machine readable) values in long reports. By default
176           Capinfos prints numeric values with human-readable SI suffixes, and
177           shows human-readable file type and encapsulation. Table reports
178           (-T) always print raw values.
179
180       -n
181
182           Displays a count of the number of resolved IPv4 addresses and a
183           count of the number of resolved IPv6 addresses in the file. This
184           information is not available in table format.
185
186       -N
187
188           Do not quote the infos. This option is only useful when generating
189           a table style report (-T). Excluding any quoting characters around
190           the various values and using a TAB delimiter produces a very
191           "clean" table report that is easily parsed with CLI tools. By
192           default infos are NOT quoted.
193
194       -o
195
196           Displays "True" if packets exist in strict chronological order or
197           "False" if one or more packets in the capture exists "out-of-order"
198           time-wise.
199
200       -q
201
202           Quote infos with single quotes ('). This option is only useful when
203           generating a table style report (-T). When this option is enabled,
204           each value will be encapsulated within a pair of single quote (')
205           characters. This option (when used  with the -m option) is useful
206           for generating one type of CSV style file report.
207
208       -Q
209
210           Quote infos with double quotes ("). This option is only useful when
211           generating a table style report (-T). When this option is enabled,
212           each value will be encapsulated within a pair of double quote (")
213           characters. This option (when used with the -m option) is useful
214           for generating the most common type of CSV style file report.
215
216       -r
217
218           Do not generate header record. This option is only useful when
219           generating a table style report (-T). If this option is specified
220           then no header record will be generated within the table report.
221
222       -R
223
224           Generate header record. This option is only useful when generating
225           a table style report (-T). A header is generated by default. A
226           header record (if generated) is the first line of data reported and
227           includes labels for all the columns included within the table
228           report.
229
230       -s
231
232           Displays the size of the file, in bytes. This reports the size of
233           the capture file itself.
234
235       -S
236
237           Display the start and end times as seconds since January 1, 1970.
238           Handy for synchronizing dumps using editcap -t.
239
240       -t
241
242           Displays the capture type of the capture file.
243
244       -T
245
246           Generate a table report. A table report is a text file that is
247           suitable for importing into a spreadsheet or database. Capinfos can
248           build a tab delimited text file (the default) or several variations
249           on Comma-separated values (CSV) files.
250
251       -u
252
253           Displays the capture duration, in seconds. This is the difference
254           in time between the earliest packet seen and latest packet seen.
255
256       -v|--version
257
258           Displays the tool’s version and exits.
259
260       -x
261
262           Displays the average packet rate, in packets/sec
263
264       -y
265
266           Displays the average data rate, in bytes/sec
267
268       -z
269
270           Displays the average packet size, in bytes
271

EXAMPLES

273       To see a description of the options use:
274
275           capinfos -h
276
277       To generate a long form report for the capture file mycapture.pcap use:
278
279           capinfos mycapture.pcap
280
281       To generate a TAB delimited table form report for the capture file
282       mycapture.pcap use:
283
284           capinfos -T mycapture.pcap
285
286       To generate a CSV style table form report for the capture file
287       mycapture.pcap use:
288
289           capinfos -T -m -Q mycapture.pcap
290
291       or
292
293           capinfos -TmQ mycapture.pcap
294
295       To generate a TAB delimited table style report with just the filenames,
296       capture type, capture encapsulation type and packet count for all the
297       pcap files in the current directory use:
298
299           capinfos -T -t -E -c *.pcap
300
301       or
302
303           capinfos -TtEc *.pcap
304
305       Note: The ability to use of filename globbing characters are a feature
306       of *nix style command shells.
307
308       To generate a CSV delimited table style report of all infos for all
309       pcap files in the current directory and write it to a text file called
310       mycaptures.csv use:
311
312           capinfos -TmQ *.pcap >mycaptures.csv
313
314       The resulting mycaptures.csv file can be easily imported into
315       spreadsheet applications.
316

SEE ALSO

318       pcap(3), wireshark(1), mergecap(1), editcap(1), tshark(1), dumpcap(1),
319       captype(1), pcap-filter(7) or tcpdump(8)
320

NOTES

322       This is the manual page for Capinfos 3.6.2. Capinfos is part of the
323       Wireshark distribution. The latest version of Wireshark can be found at
324       https://www.wireshark.org.
325
326       HTML versions of the Wireshark project man pages are available at
327       https://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages.
328

AUTHORS

330       Original Author
331       Ian Schorr <ian[AT]ianschorr.com>
332
333       Contributors
334       Gerald Combs <gerald[AT]wireshark.org>
335       Jim Young <jyoung[AT]gsu.edu>
336
337
338
339                                  2022-02-16                       CAPINFOS(1)
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