Prob involving tcpdump + ping on liveCD
 

Hi,
Just mucking about on the Slax 5.1.8 live CD but perhaps this prob may apply to any live CD.

I want to look at some tcpdump output when I ping the local host. The machine is not connected to the Internet it is just a regular standalone with NIC at eth0.

I open up two terminals. In the first one I run :

and in the second one :

Now the "ping" command works fine, but there is no response from the tcpdump terminal. It remains speechless. I have tried using the -v argument but to no avail.
No firewall/IPTables running and ipconfig indicates NIC is at eth0. If took the liberty of issuing the

prior to running both tcpdump and ping.
Any clues ?

Cheers,
Uncle.

uncle-c,

Do you see the problem here? You're telling it to listen on eth0, then you're pinging the loopback device...

I altered the command to tcpdump -i 127.0.0.1 icmp ( ping 127.0.0.1) but get adaptor error.
Also tcpdump -i 192.168.0.2 icmp ( the IP address) and ping 192.168.0.2 to no effect. I'm flumoxed, only the solution will help me understand where I'm going wrong !!

Try tcpdump -i lo to listen on the loopback device.

If that doesn't work check the results of ifconfig for the proper name.

tcpdump -i lo worked fine when i entered ping 127.0.0.1

but why does it not work when I enter tcpdump -i 127.0.0.1 and ping 127.0.0.1 ?

Thanks again.
Uncle-c

uncle-c, it's a good time to dig into the manpages. It's all there in tcpdump(8).

127.0.0.1 is an IP address, not an interface.

And here is an example for proof:
Next task - look up the -D option in those manpages. ;)

Anomie, thanks for directing me onto the correct learning curve ! Much appreciated.
all good wishes
uncle-c