tcpdump / ethereal on dialup disconnect
 

G'day peeps,

Just want to know if yous could help me out with a little problem or two. :)

I'm running RedHat 9 and using it with my dialup connection. The problem i'm having, is that when my dialup connection resets (every 5 hours) tcpdump/ethereal tell me the obvious that's its gone down... and the exit (in tcpdumps case), or display an error message and stop logging packets (in ethereal's case).

I've read through the man pages, but nowhere is there an option to tell either of them to stop whinging and continue as if nothing happened - in my case my dialup will reconnect in a few seconds... and i obviously want to continue catching packets.

I mean, i've used a number of Windows based network analysers... and they dont have a problem with the device going down - they'll happily wait until the network is back up... and will continue logging.

Maybe i'm missing something - but i dont see why this should ever be a problem, and i was wondering if one of yous knew how to either allow tmpdump/ethereal to ignore or continue logging without having a problem... or you know of a different network analyzer that's smart enough to just keep doing its job - regardless of what's happening to the network.

Its kinda odd, because i would've thought there should at LEAST be a option for something like this, because networks do go down - even if they're only dialup - and we still want our network analysers to log things when the network comes back up again..... altho apparantly - from my experience - they dont. :p

Anyways, sorry about the length or possible flame against tcpdump/ethereal... cos i'm sure its something i've overlooked, or just dont know. :):)

Thanks in advance :)

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TheVillageIdiot

lol anyone?? :P