xref: /freebsd/contrib/libpcap/doc/README.aix (revision d4eeb02986980bf33dd56c41ceb9fc5f180c0d47)
1Using BPF:
2
3(1) AIX 4.x's version of BPF is undocumented and somewhat unstandard; the
4    current BPF support code includes changes that should work around
5    that; it appears to compile and work on at least one AIX 4.3.3
6    machine.
7
8    Note that the BPF driver and the "/dev/bpf" devices might not exist
9    on your machine; AIX's tcpdump loads the driver and creates the
10    devices if they don't already exist.  Our libpcap should do the
11    same, and the configure script should detect that it's on an AIX
12    system and choose BPF even if the devices aren't there.
13
14    Also note that tcpdump _binary_ compiled on AIX 4 may have a problem
15    doing the initial loading of the BPF driver if copied to AIX 5 and
16    run there (GH #52). tcpdump binary natively compiled on AIX 5 should
17    not have this issue.
18
19(2) If libpcap doesn't compile on your machine when configured to use
20    BPF, or if the workarounds fail to make it work correctly, you
21    should send to tcpdump-workers@lists.tcpdump.org a detailed bug
22    report (if the compile fails, send us the compile error messages;
23    if it compiles but fails to work correctly, send us as detailed as
24    possible a description of the symptoms, including indications of the
25    network link-layer type being wrong or time stamps being wrong).
26
27    If you fix the problems yourself, please submit a patch by forking
28    the branch at
29
30	https://github.com/the-tcpdump-group/libpcap/issues
31
32    and issuing a pull request, so we can incorporate the fixes into the
33    next release.
34
35    If you don't fix the problems yourself, you can, as a workaround,
36    make libpcap use DLPI instead of BPF.
37
38    This can be done by specifying the flag:
39
40       --with-pcap=dlpi
41
42    to the "configure" script for libpcap.
43
44If you use DLPI:
45
46(1) It is a good idea to have the latest version of the DLPI driver on
47    your system, since certain versions may be buggy and cause your AIX
48    system to crash.  DLPI is included in the fileset bos.rte.tty.  I
49    found that the DLPI driver that came with AIX 4.3.2 was buggy, and
50    had to upgrade to bos.rte.tty 4.3.2.4:
51
52	    lslpp -l bos.rte.tty
53
54	    bos.rte.tty     4.3.2.4  COMMITTED  Base TTY Support and Commands
55
56    Updates for AIX filesets can be obtained from:
57    ftp://service.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/
58
59    These updates can be installed with the smit program.
60
61(2) After compiling libpcap, you need to make sure that the DLPI driver
62    is loaded.  Type:
63
64	    strload -q -d dlpi
65
66    If the result is:
67
68	    dlpi: yes
69
70    then the DLPI driver is loaded correctly.
71
72    If it is:
73
74	    dlpi: no
75
76    Then you need to type:
77
78	    strload -f /etc/dlpi.conf
79
80    Check again with strload -q -d dlpi that the dlpi driver is loaded.
81
82    Alternatively, you can uncomment the lines for DLPI in
83    /etc/pse.conf and reboot the machine; this way DLPI will always
84    be loaded when you boot your system.
85
86(3) There appears to be a problem in the DLPI code in some versions of
87    AIX, causing a warning about DL_PROMISC_MULTI failing; this might
88    be responsible for DLPI not being able to capture outgoing packets.
89