CAPINFOS(1) CAPINFOS(1)

NAME

capinfos - Prints information about capture files

SYNOPSIS

capinfos [ -a ] [ -A ] [ -b ] [ -B ] [ -c ] [ -C ] [ -d ] [ -D ]
[ -e ] [ -E ] [ -F ] [ -h ] [ -H ] [ -i ] [ -I ] [ -k ] [ -K ] [ -l ]
[ -L ] [ -m ] [ -M ] [ -n ] [ -N ] [ -o ] [ -q ] [ -Q ] [ -r ] [ -R ]
[ -s ] [ -S ] [ -t ] [ -T ] [ -u ] [ -v ] [ -x ] [ -y ] [ -z ]
<infile> ...

DESCRIPTION

Capinfos is a program that reads one or more capture files and
returns some or all available statistics (infos) of each <infile> in
one of two types of output formats: long or table.

The long output is suitable for a human to read. The table output is
useful for generating a report that can be easily imported into a
spreadsheet or database.

The user specifies what type of output (long or table) and which
statistics to display by specifying flags (options) that
corresponding to the report type and desired infos. If no options
are specified, Capinfos will report all statistics available in
"long" format.

Options are processed from left to right order with later options
superseding or adding to earlier options.

Capinfos is able to detect and read the same capture files that are
supported by Wireshark. The input files don't need a specific
filename extension; the file format and an optional gzip, zstd or lz4
compression will be automatically detected. Near the beginning of
the DESCRIPTION section of wireshark(1) or
<https://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/wireshark.html> is a
detailed description of the way Wireshark handles this, which is the
same way Capinfos handles this.

OPTIONS

-a

Displays the start time of the capture. Capinfos considers the
earliest timestamp seen to be the start time, so the first packet
in the capture is not necessarily the earliest - if packets exist
"out-of-order", time-wise, in the capture, Capinfos detects this.

-A

Generate all infos. By default Capinfos will display all infos
values for each input file, but enabling any of the individual
display infos options will disable the generate all option.

-b

Separate infos with ASCII SPACE (0x20) characters. This option
is only useful when generating a table style report (-T). The
various info values will be separated (delimited) from one
another with a single ASCII SPACE character.

Note

Since some of the header labels as well as some
of the value fields contain SPACE characters. This option is
of limited value unless one of the quoting options (-q or -Q)
is also specified.

-B

Separate the infos with ASCII TAB characters. This option is
only useful when generating a table style report (-T). The
various info values will be separated (delimited) from one
another with a single ASCII TAB character. The TAB character is
the default delimiter when -T style report is enabled.

-c

Displays the number of packets in the capture file.

-C

Cancel processing any additional files if and when Capinfos fails
to open an input file or gets an error reading an input file. By
default Capinfos will continue processing files even if it gets
an error opening or reading a file.

Note: An error message will be written to stderr whenever
Capinfos fails to open a file or gets an error reading from a
file regardless whether the -C option is specified or not. Upon
exit, Capinfos will return an error status if any errors occurred
during processing.

-d

Displays the total length of all packets in the file, in bytes.
This counts the size of the packets as they appeared in their
original form, not as they appear in this file. For example, if
a packet was originally 1514 bytes and only 256 of those bytes
were saved to the capture file (if packets were captured with a
snaplen or other slicing option), Capinfos will consider the
packet to have been 1514 bytes.

-D

Displays a count of the number of decryption secrets in the file.
This information is not available in table format.

-e

Displays the end time of the capture. Capinfos considers the
latest timestamp seen to be the end time, so the last packet in
the capture is not necessarily the latest - if packets exist
"out-of-order", time-wise, in the capture, Capinfos detects this.

-E

Displays the per-file encapsulation of the capture file.

-F

Displays additional capture file information.

-h|--help

Prints the help listing and exits.

-H

Displays the SHA256, RIPEMD160, and SHA1 hashes for the file.
SHA1 output may be removed in the future.

-i

Displays the average data rate, in bits/sec

-I

Displays detailed capture file interface information. This
information is not available in table format.

-k

Displays the capture comment. For pcapng files, this is the
comment from the section header block.

-K

Use this option to suppress printing capture comments. By
default capture comments are enabled. Capture comments are
relatively freeform and might contain embedded new-line
characters and/or other delimiting characters making it harder
for a human or machine to easily parse the Capinfos output.
Excluding capture comments can aid in post-processing of output.

-l

Display the snaplen (if any) for a file. snaplen (if available)
is determined from the capture file header and by looking for
truncated records in the capture file.

-L

Generate long report. Capinfos can generate two different styles
of reports. The "long" report is the default style of output and
is suitable for a human to use.

-m

Separate the infos with comma (,) characters. This option is
only useful when generating a table style report (-T). The
various info values will be separated (delimited) from one
another with a single comma "," character.

-M

Print raw (machine readable) values in long reports. By default
Capinfos prints numeric values with human-readable SI suffixes,
and shows human-readable file type and encapsulation. Table
reports (-T) always print raw values.

-n

Displays a count of the number of resolved IPv4 addresses and a
count of the number of resolved IPv6 addresses in the file. This
information is not available in table format.

-N

Do not quote the infos. This option is only useful when
generating a table style report (-T). Excluding any quoting
characters around the various values and using a TAB delimiter
produces a very "clean" table report that is easily parsed with
CLI tools. By default infos are NOT quoted.

-o

Displays "True" if packets exist in strict chronological order or
"False" if one or more packets in the capture exists
"out-of-order" time-wise.

-q

Quote infos with single quotes ('). This option is only useful
when generating a table style report (-T). When this option is
enabled, each value will be encapsulated within a pair of single
quote (') characters. This option (when used with the -m
option) is useful for generating one type of CSV style file
report.

-Q

Quote infos with double quotes ("). This option is only useful
when generating a table style report (-T). When this option is
enabled, each value will be encapsulated within a pair of double
quote (") characters. This option (when used with the -m option)
is useful for generating the most common type of CSV style file
report.

-r

Do not generate header record. This option is only useful when
generating a table style report (-T). If this option is
specified then no header record will be generated within the
table report.

-R

Generate header record. This option is only useful when
generating a table style report (-T). A header is generated by
default. A header record (if generated) is the first line of
data reported and includes labels for all the columns included
within the table report.

-s

Displays the size of the file, in bytes. This reports the size
of the capture file itself.

-S

Display the start and end times as seconds since January 1, 1970.
Handy for synchronizing dumps using editcap -t.

-t

Displays the capture type of the capture file.

-T

Generate a table report. A table report is a text file that is
suitable for importing into a spreadsheet or database. Capinfos
can build a tab delimited text file (the default) or several
variations on Comma-separated values (CSV) files.

-u

Displays the capture duration, in seconds. This is the
difference in time between the earliest packet seen and latest
packet seen.

-v|--version

Displays the tool's version and exits.

-x

Displays the average packet rate, in packets/sec

-y

Displays the average data rate, in bytes/sec

-z

Displays the average packet size, in bytes

EXAMPLES

To see a description of the options use:

capinfos -h

To generate a long form report for the capture file mycapture.pcap
use:

capinfos mycapture.pcap

To generate a TAB delimited table form report for the capture file
mycapture.pcap use:

capinfos -T mycapture.pcap

To generate a CSV style table form report for the capture file
mycapture.pcap use:

capinfos -T -m -Q mycapture.pcap

or

capinfos -TmQ mycapture.pcap

To generate a TAB delimited table style report with just the
filenames, capture type, capture encapsulation type and packet count
for all the pcap files in the current directory use:

capinfos -T -t -E -c *.pcap

or

capinfos -TtEc *.pcap

Note: The ability to use of filename globbing characters are a
feature of *nix style command shells.

To generate a CSV delimited table style report of all infos for all
pcap files in the current directory and write it to a text file
called mycaptures.csv use:

capinfos -TmQ *.pcap >mycaptures.csv

The resulting mycaptures.csv file can be easily imported into
spreadsheet applications.

SEE ALSO

pcap(3), wireshark(1), mergecap(1), editcap(1), tshark(1),
dumpcap(1), captype(1), pcap-filter(7) or tcpdump(8)

NOTES

This is the manual page for Capinfos 3.6.22. Capinfos is part of the
Wireshark distribution. The latest version of Wireshark can be found
at <https://www.wireshark.org>.

HTML versions of the Wireshark project man pages are available at
<https://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages>.

AUTHORS

Original Author
Ian Schorr <ian[AT]ianschorr.com>

Contributors
Gerald Combs <gerald[AT]wireshark.org>
Jim Young <jyoung[AT]gsu.edu>

2024-03-27 CAPINFOS(1)