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Capture file cannot be opened when tshark is executed with `sudo`

asked 2023-12-04 12:31:03 +0000

yoshida gravatar image

updated 2023-12-04 12:35:56 +0000

I am trying to get Wi-Fi sniffer logs and save them to ~/log/ directory using tshark.

However, when I execute tshark as bellow, it cannot open the log file because of the Permission denied.

$ mkdir ~/log
$ sudo chmod 777 ~/log
$ cd ~
$ ls -ld ~
drwxr-x--- 21 user1 user1 4096 Dec  4 19:50 /home/user1
$ sudo tshark -i wlan0 -w ./log/sniffer.pcap
Running as user "root" and group "root". This could be dangerous.
Capturing on 'wlan0_mon'
tshark: The file to which the capture would be saved ("hoge.pcap") could not be opened: Permission denied.

tshark:

I noticed that default home directory permissions were changed to 750 in Ubuntu 22.04, so I change them to 755 as before. Then this error was resolved.

$ sudo chmod 755 ~
$ ls -ld ~
drwxr-xr-x 21 user1 user1 4096 Dec  4 19:50 /home/user1
$ cd ~
$ sudo tshark -i wlan0 -w ./log/sniffer.pcap
# The capture starts as I exepected and the sniffer log is saved in ~/log/sniffer.pcap

Questions:

  • Is this behavior as intended ?
  • Why does this behavior occur?

Environment:

  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04.1
  • kernel: 6.2.0-37-generic
  • tshark: TShark (Wireshark) 4.0.6 (Git v4.0.6 packaged as 4.0.6-1~exp1~ubuntu22.04.0~ppa1).
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Comments

Why are you running as root? Doesn't the warning Running as user "root" and group "root". This could be dangerous. give you pause for thought?

grahamb gravatar imagegrahamb ( 2023-12-04 14:17:29 +0000 )edit

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answered 2023-12-04 17:12:53 +0000

Guy Harris gravatar image

$ sudo tshark -i wlan0 -w ./log/sniffer.pcap

...

OS: Ubuntu

Instead of running as root, try reconfiguring the Wireshark installation to allow non-root packet capturing by running sudo dpkg-reconfigure wireshark-common and answering "yes" if it asks whether you want to allow capturing by non-root users, and then run TShark without sudo.

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Thank you for your cooperation.

I can capture and save the logs by executing tshark by non-root user.

But I am little confused why the behavior is affected by these permission of the home directory.

yoshida gravatar imageyoshida ( 2023-12-05 09:10:48 +0000 )edit

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Asked: 2023-12-04 12:31:03 +0000

Seen: 3,140 times

Last updated: Dec 04 '23