Change log for EtherApe

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.20 (Sunday, May 16, 2021):

Link fading now follows the averaging timer, giving a better feel of packet flow.

Improved xml output. Now contains also links and global protocol statistics.

Several preferences were removed or merged in a general tidying.
Preference upgrade is automatic, but if EtherApe detects obsolete parameters the user will be asked to review and confirm the new settings.

Compatibility Warnings:

Changes summary:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.19 (Friday, May 15, 2020):

This is primarily a bugfix release, but thanks to AlexL adds also a Russian translation.

Changes summary:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.18 (Sunday, June 3, 2018):

EtherApe now is a pure GTK 3 application, with canvas supplied by GooCanvas.

While GooCanvas itself is in maintenance mode, is still the simplest Gnome canvas library available and with an API almost identical to gnome-canvas, too! Longer term, EtherApe ui should be completely redesigned and modernized, but this is for another day.

Changes summary:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.17 (Thursday, April 5, 2018):

This is a bugfix release, because a bug made 0.9.16 still runtime-dependent on gnomeui and other gnome 2 libraries.

Changes summary:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.17 (Thursday, April 5, 2018):

This is a bugfix release, because a bug made 0.9.16 still runtime-dependent on gnomeui and other gnome 2 libraries.

Changes summary:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.16 (Sunday, January 14, 2018):

Several distributions are phasing out Gnome 2 libraries and EtherApe needs to update as well.
Unfortunately, this mean dropping support for older distributions, for example CENTOS 5 and 6.
At this time the EtherApe executable can still be built for those distributions, but not the project as a whole.

This is an interim release, where the only Gnome 2 component is gnome-canvas. Apart of that, EtherApe is now a GTK2 application.
Work is underway to replace gnome-canvas with another component.
Documentation is now based on yelp-tools instead of Scroolkeeper/Rarian.

Many thanks to Patrick Matth�i for packaging EtherApe for Debian and helping to keep this tool current.

Changes summary:

As usual, and thanks to OpenSuse Build Service, prebuilt rpms are available for:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.15 (Friday February 10, 2017):

Big thanks to Zev Weiss, who did almost all the work for this release (Release delays are entirely mine, however).

Central node ring setting now accepts multiple node specifiers (separated by any combination of spaces and/or commas), and also now understands glob syntax, so you can put for example

10.0.0.0/24, *.mydomain.tld, somehost.otherdomain.tld

and it will do what you'd expect.

There is now a compile-time configure option ('--with-c-ares', disabled by default) to enable DNS resolution via the c-ares library, supplanting EtherApe's built-in multithreaded gethostbyaddr(3)-based resolver. This is a fully non-blocking DNS library and thus has potential for better performance while using only a single background resolver thread, but also means that name-lookup is strictly DNS-based, and will thus not take /etc/hosts, NIS, or other name services into account.

There is a slightly backwards-incompatible change in the syntax of the node-position file used with the '-P' flag added in release 0.9.14. It now uses the same CIDR notation plus hostname-globbing syntax used by the central node ring setting (instead of POSIX regular expressions). This provides simpler and more consistent syntax with essentially the same real-world utility, but may require some small changes to existing node-position files.
Some examples:

old (regex)   new (CIDR+glob)
172.16.2.[0-9]*   172.16.2.0/24
.*.mydomain.com   *.mydomain.com
fe80:.*   fe80::/16

Additionally, each line of the node-position file may now include multiple such node-matching patterns (separated by spaces and/or commas as with the central node ring setting), so a single line might look like:

*.mydomain.com, 10.0.0.0/24 3

(to put all nodes matching the given domain or CIDR range into column 3).

As a security feature (privilege separation), packet-capture operations are now isolated in a separate background process. The new '-Z' flag can be used to specify a user to run the main (foreground) process as.

Changes summary:

As usual, and thanks to OpenSuse Build Service, prebuilt rpms are available for:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.14 (Saturday February 06, 2016):

EtherApe now users the system /etc/services file instead of its own.
While this change make some customizations a bit harder, it guarantees an up-to-date services file.
Note to packagers: /etc/etherape is not needed anymore.

Central node option now undestands CIDR notation, allowing for a central ring of nodes, thanks to Zev Weiss.

Static background image, courtesy of Glenn Feunteun.

Nodes can be optionally arranged as columns, thanks to David Goldfarb.

Changes summary:

As usual, and thanks to OpenSuse Build Service, EtherApe rpms are available for:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.13 (Sunday May 05, 2013):

Central node option, useful for displaying routers or proxies.
Translations and documentation updates, plus some fixes.

Changes summary:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.12 (Tuesday May 31, 2011):

This is a bugfix release.
Shortly after releasing 0.9.11, David Goldfarb discovered a critical bug in EtherApe, triggered by RPC traffic.

This bug can be exploited to crash EtherApe by sending a suitable packet.
No packet data is used beyond the IP addresses, however, making further escalation unlikely.

This bug has been assigned CVE number CVE-2011-3369

Changes summary:

 

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.11 (Friday May 27, 2011):

Several users asked for a way to export traffic statistics.
EtherApe now can save a snapshot with all known nodes and relevant informations to an XML file.
With option --final-export, a dump is automatically generated when a capture file is fully replayed.
Additionally, option --signal-export enables SIGUSR1 handling, to dump on signal.

EtherApe used to have two links for connection, one for each traffic direction. With this release, only one link is needed, gaining more complete statistics and better resource usage.

EtherApe config file is now ~/.config/etherape, instead of the older, deprecated, ~/.gnome2/Etherape. Migration is automatic. Filter expression is now saved.

Thanks to OpenSUSE Build Service and a new spec file, development rpms can easily be built for OpenSUSE 11.x/Tumbleweed, SLE11, Centos5/RHEL5, Fedora and Mandriva.
The spec file is somewhat generic, lacking the nicer integrations of official distribution packages, so you are advised to build with EtherApe spec file only as a last resort.

OSX compatibility improved, thanks to Zack Perry.

The old, deprecated, direct resolver was removed. Name resolution is now only done with the full fledged threaded resolver.

Changes summary:

EtherApe 0.9.10 RPM packages now available (Friday Feb 25, 2011):

Thanks to OpenSUSE Build Service, prebuilt RPM packages for major distributions are now ready for download.

On SourceForge download section you'll find i586 and x86_64 RPMs for:

plus an RPM source package.

Those packages are somewhat generic, lacking the fancy touches of official distribution packages, like pam integration, automatic root password request, and so on.

Debian, OpenSUSE, Mandriva cooker and others have already official builds of EtherApe 0.9.10. If available, you should use your distribution package.

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.10 (Sunday Feb 06, 2011):

The most notable change is IPV6 support, thanks to David Flamand.

EtherApe now computes average packet size, to better estimate network usage. The new option --min-delay allows slow-motion replay of a capture file.

In 0.9.9 relnotes I forgot to mention a fix from Sotiris Sotiropoulos. Many apologies for the mistake.

Note: the old non-threaded name resolver is deprecated and will be removed on the next release.
If you really need it, speak up *now*.
Works only with IPV4 addresses, anyway.

Important: CVS repository closed
Effective from today, EtherApe CVS is no longer accessible. Please refer to the Mercurial repository.

Changes summary:

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.9 (Monday Jan 04, 2010):

The most interesting change of this release is *basic* 802.11 WLAN support. WLAN is one of the most complex protocols around ('crazy' sometimes seems a better description) and there's no way to support it completely without a dedicated display mode.

As an example, a single WLAN packet could contain up to four (4) addresses, source and destination, plus AP interchange. Showing the exact packet route could be interesting for someone trying to understand WLANs, but not very useful to monitor application traffic. So EtherApe tries to treat APs like routers, ignoring them if not directly addressed. Thus a packet starting from node X and ending with node Y will be shown as a straight link between the two nodes, even if the real path was X-AP and AP-Y.

The other notable improvement is 802.1Q VLAN tagging support. VLAN tags are decoded but ignored, showing all traffic as being in a normal LAN. Filtering a single vlan could be accomplished with pcap expressions. Note: Due to pcap limitations, to correctly filter VLAN traffic the pcap filter must start with the keyword "vlan" (e.g. vlan and ip) and *all* traffic must be VLAN-tagged.

All data-link level modes (Ethernet, FDDI, etc) are now unified in a single Link Layer mode, with automated detection (thanks to libpcap).

Note to packagers: EtherApe now uses gnome-doc-utils. Manual should appear in yelp under 'Internet'.

Important: this release will be the last mirrored on the CVS repository, wich will be shut down as of march 2010.

Changes summary:

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.8 (Sunday Sep 27 2009):

Apart for the usual bug fixes, this release see a the switch to glade-3, the overdue removal of bonobo dock and several other deprecated widgets.
Most of the ui now uses directly Gtk+ instead of Gnome. At this time there isn't a real alternative to GnomeCanvas, so quite a bit of Gnome still remains.

To make partially up for the long delay, there are some new functionality as well: a node listing window, substantial performance enhancements, and some improvements here and there. See the details below.

Note the new timing defaults: out of the box, Etherape will react faster to traffic changes and give a better "feel" of current the network state.
The faster expiration will also help to reduce memory and cpu requirements. On the other hand, "forgetting" inactive nodes faster makes Etherape less suited for mid-term monitoring; the new values will be too small.

I believe this change will be useful to most people, though, and especially suited to newcomers, who often have difficulties understanding the different timing types. Experienced users can still easily adapt Etherape to their needs.

I have already mentioned the switch to mercurial. A couple months from now the CVS repository will be shut down.

Changes summary:

Development repository switched to Mercurial (Tuesday Sep 08 2009):

Now that SourceForge officially supports Mercurial, there's no reason to still use CVS.
DVCs are faster, have much more features and imho much better suited to open source work.
Using hg should also lower the barrier for anyone wishing to hack on Etherape.

The old CVS repo will be occasionally (e.g. on releases) synchronized for a while to make life easier for packagers. Full history will be available only on hg, however.

Note:
The new mercurial repo contains almost all the past project history, but since it's a conversion between two very different systems (for example, CVS doesn't have changesets, so the converter must infer them from timestamps and commit messages), there are some differences. So, if you really want to know how the project evolved before release 0.9.7, please consult the CVS repo.

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.7 (Saturday Sep 30 2006):

Bugfix release. Special thanks to Pav Lucistnik for providing patches and bug reports.

Changes summary:

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.6 (Tuesday May 16 2006):

Some distributions had trouble linking correctly EtherApe.  This release should fix that.

Changes summary:

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.5 (Saturday May 06 2006):

After the recent changes the manual was really obsolete.  This release features a completely rewritten one, properly integrated with the Gnome help browser. You'll find EtherApe under Applications - System tools.

Changes summary:

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.4 (Saturday Jan 14 2006):

This release comes after a first round of extensive refactoring, needed to clean up some of the cruft accumulated during the years and make further developments easier. While still a work in progress, memory control is tighter and protocol dissectors more robust. 

EtherApe calculates an extensive set of traffic statistics, even if only a small part is always visible on the diagram. For example, every node and link maintains complete data for every protocol seen, but only the most active one is displayed.  Thus, the detail dialogs now show also traffic breakdown by protocol.

Changes summary:

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.3 (Thursday 8-18-2005):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.2 (Saturday 8-13-2005):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.1 (Wednesday 8-11-2004):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.9.0(Saturday 01-03-2003):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.8.2 (Sunday 08-12-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.8.1 (Monday 08-06-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.8.0 (Friday 08-03-2001):

Juan Toledo got his engineering degree (07-20-2001)

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.8 (Friday 07-06-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.7 (Friday 06-22-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.6 (Sunday 05-13-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.5 (Friday 05-10-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.4 (Wednesday 05-09-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.3 (Tuesday 05-08-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.2 (Monday 05-07-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.1 (Sunday 05-06-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.7.0 (Saturday 05-05-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.9 (Thursday 04-26-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.8 (Wednesday 04-25-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.7 (Monday 04-23-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.6 (Saturday 04-21-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.5 (Saturday 04-21-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.4 (Friday 04-20-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.3 (Thursday 04-19-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.2 (Wednesday 04-18-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.1 (Tuesday 04-17-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.6.0 (Saturday 04-15-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.9 (Thursday 04-12-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.8 (Thursday 04-05-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.7 (Tuesday 04-03-2001):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.6 (Thursday 05-4-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.5 (Saturday 04-22-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.4 (Saturday 04-22-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.3 (Friday 04-21-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.2 (Thursday 04-20-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.1 (Wednesday 04-19-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.5.0 (Saturday 04-15-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.7 (Friday 04-14-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.6 (Monday 04-10-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.5 (Sunday 04-09-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.4 (Sunday 04-09-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.3 (Tuesday 04-04-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.2 (Tuesday 04-04-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.1 (Monday 04-03-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.4.0 (Wednesday 03-29-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.9 (Wednesday 03-29-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.8 (Wednesday 03-29-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.7 (Friday 03-24-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.6 (Friday 03-24-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.5 (Thursday 03-23-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.4 (Thursday 03-23-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.3 (Thursday 03-23-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.2 (Wednesday 03-22-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.1 (Monday 03-20-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.3.0 (Saturday 03-18-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.11 (Friday 03-17-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.10 (Thursday 03-16-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.9 (Thursday 03-16-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.8 (Wednesday 03-15-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.7 (Monday 03-13-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.6 (Saturday 03-11-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.5 (Friday 03-10-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.4 (Thursday 03-09-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.3 (Wednesday 03-08-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.2 (Tuesday 03-07-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.1 (Monday 03-06-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.2.0 (Friday 03-03-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.9 (Thursday 03-02-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.8 (Wednesday 03-01-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.7 (Tuesday 02-29-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.6 (Monday 02-28-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.5 (Sunday 02-27-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.4 (Sunday 02-27-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.3 (Saturday 02-26-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.2 (Saturday 02-26-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.1 (Friday 02-25-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.1.0 (Friday 02-25-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.0.8 (Thursday 02-24-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.0.7 (Thursday 02-24-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.0.6 (Wednesday 02-23-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.0.5 (Wednesday 02-23-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.0.4 (Monday 02-21-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.0.3 (Sunday 02-20-2000):

Overview of changes in EtherApe 0.0.2 (Saturday 02-19-2000):

Overview of EtherApe 0.0.1 (Friday 02-18-2000):


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