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Diffstat (limited to 'contrib/libpcap/README.macosx')
-rw-r--r-- | contrib/libpcap/README.macosx | 43 |
1 files changed, 43 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/contrib/libpcap/README.macosx b/contrib/libpcap/README.macosx new file mode 100644 index 0000000..25794d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/contrib/libpcap/README.macosx @@ -0,0 +1,43 @@ +As with other systems using BPF, Mac OS X allows users with read access +to the BPF devices to capture packets with libpcap and allows users with +write access to the BPF devices to send packets with libpcap. + +On some systems that use BPF, the BPF devices live on the root file +system, and the permissions and/or ownership on those devices can be +changed to give users other than root permission to read or write those +devices. + +On newer versions of FreeBSD, the BPF devices live on devfs, and devfs +can be configured to set the permissions and/or ownership of those +devices to give users other than root permission to read or write those +devices. + +On Mac OS X, the BPF devices live on devfs, but the OS X version of +devfs is based on an older (non-default) FreeBSD devfs, and that version +of devfs cannot be configured to set the permissions and/or ownership of +those devices. + +Therefore, we supply a "startup item" for OS X that will change the +ownership of the BPF devices so that the "admin" group owns them, and +will change the permission of the BPF devices to rw-rw----, so that all +users in the "admin" group - i.e., all users with "Allow user to +administer this computer" turned on - have both read and write access to +them. + +The startup item is in the ChmodBPF directory in the source tree. A +/Library/StartupItems directory should be created if it doesn't already +exist, and the ChmodBPF directory should be copied to the +/Library/StartupItems directory (copy the entire directory, so that +there's a /Library/StartupItems/ChmodBPF directory, containing all the +files in the source tree's ChmodBPF directory; don't copy the individual +items in that directory to /Library/StartupItems). + +If you want to give a particular user permission to access the BPF +devices, rather than giving all administrative users permission to +access them, you can have the ChmodBPF/ChmodBPF script change the +ownership of /dev/bpf* without changing the permissions. If you want to +give a particular user permission to read and write the BPF devices and +give the administrative users permission to read but not write the BPF +devices, you can have the script change the owner to that user, the +group to "admin", and the permissions to rw-r-----. Other possibilities +are left as an exercise for the reader. |