NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PCAP_OPEN_LIVE(3PCAP)                                  PCAP_OPEN_LIVE(3PCAP)

NAME         top

       pcap_open_live - open a device for capturing

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <pcap/pcap.h>
       char errbuf[PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE];
       pcap_t *pcap_open_live(const char *device, int snaplen,
               int promisc, int to_ms, char *errbuf);

DESCRIPTION         top

       pcap_open_live() is used to obtain a packet capture handle to look at
       packets on the network.  device is a string that specifies the
       network device to open; on Linux systems with 2.2 or later kernels, a
       device argument of "any" or NULL can be used to capture packets from
       all interfaces.
       snaplen specifies the snapshot length to be set on the handle.
       promisc specifies if the interface is to be put into promiscuous
       mode.
       to_ms specifies the packet buffer timeout in milliseconds.  (See
       pcap(3PCAP) for an explanation of the packet buffer timeout.)

RETURN VALUE         top

       pcap_open_live() returns a pcap_t * on success and NULL on failure.
       If NULL is returned, errbuf is filled in with an appropriate error
       message.  errbuf may also be set to warning text when
       pcap_open_live() succeeds; to detect this case the caller should
       store a zero-length string in errbuf before calling pcap_open_live()
       and display the warning to the user if errbuf is no longer a zero-
       length string.  errbuf is assumed to be able to hold at least
       PCAP_ERRBUF_SIZE chars.

SEE ALSO         top

       pcap(3PCAP), pcap_create(3PCAP), pcap_activate(3PCAP)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the libpcap (packet capture library) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.tcpdump.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://www.tcpdump.org/#patches⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨https://github.com/the-tcpdump-group/libpcap.git⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If
       you discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the
       page, or you have corrections or improvements to the information in
       this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a
       mail to man-pages@man7.org
                               20 January 2017         PCAP_OPEN_LIVE(3PCAP)