Re: libpcap-1.2.1: Building from source: issues

[Guy Harris <guy () alum mit edu>]

On Jan 29, 2012, at 1:34 AM, dynamo () lavabit com wrote:

> I've trying to build from source libpcap-1.2.1 but have been getting into
> trouble when building other software, lft-3.33, that errors on build.

What are the errors you're getting?

> I think I may have missed something in building libpcap-1.2.1 that's causing
> the other soft to bug out.

Let's look at the build errors you're getting in order to determine what the exact problems are.

> Should all build steps, './configure', 'make', and 'make install' be done
> from root@ubuntu?

No.  I would not do anything other than 

> What C Compiler is recommended?

We don't recommend any particular C compiler; any sufficiently GCC-compatible compiler should work, and I also test 
whether libpcap and tcpdump can be built with at least some  compilers from various UN*X vendors.

> Is gcc O.K.,

Yes.

> which do you prefer?

I, at least, don't have any preference here; I don't know whether Michael has any preference.  As you're talking about 
Linux, probably *any* C compiler available should work; GCC is pretty much the standard, so it's probably the easiest 
one to get.

> What other dependencies will I need to build libpcap-1.2.1?
> flex and bison are 2 that I am aware of off the top of my head.

Those, plus a C compiler and, if it's not installed by default, a "developer" package for glibc, should suffice.  If 
you want to capture in monitor mode on 802.11 adapters, things will work a little better if you have a "developer" 
package for libnl version 1 or 2 installed as well.

> Can I 'apt-get remove libpcap0.8' before building libpcap-1.2.1?

You could, but that will break any programs that are dynamically linked with libpcap, such as tcpdump and possibly 
other programs.  In addition, unless you configure libpcap to be installed under /usr rather than /usr/local 
(--prefix=/usr when running the configure script), those programs might *remain* broken even after you install libpcap 
1.2.1, *and* you'd need to make sure that the new library has the same soname:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soname

as the library you uninstalled (which will *not* happen by default!).
-
This is the tcpdump-workers list.
Visit https://cod.sandelman.ca/ to unsubscribe.