Ubuntu
wireshark package

  1. Bug #198884
  2. Comment #15

Comment 15 for bug 198884

Revision history for this message
SK (stephantom) wrote : Re: Wireshark 0.99.7 halted in Hardy

After some digging with people from #ubuntu-bugs (Thanks to james_w and crimsun!) we've narrowed the issue down a bit:
First off, this only happens with gksu; kdesu is not affected.
The problem seems to be dumpcap, the utility which actually captures the packages. A child process is created once the 'Interfaces' window is opened. To close the window again, wireshark expects dumpcap to terminate.
But it does not quit, most likely due to problems with gaining capabilities (cf. dumpcap.c ~ line 501+). dumpcap may request something that gksu is not willing to give.

Related upstream bugs might be:
http://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2288 (fixed)
http://bugs.wireshark.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1740 (still open)

The strange thing is, that there are multiple reports from people who are using wireshark through gksu without any problems.