Pulsar Wireshark dissector

The Pulsar Wireshark dissector allows to automatically decode the Pulsar binary protocol and visualize useful debug information (linking requests with responses, latency stats, etc.)

There is also a dissector written in Lua, which only supports Wireshark before 4.0.

To install the Wireshark, see the official documents for details.

How to use

Install dependencies

• macOS

$ brew install wireshark

• Ubuntu

$ sudo apt install wireshark-dev

Build from source

Run the following commands in this subdirectory.

cmake -B build
cmake --build build

Then the pulsar-dissector.so plugin will be created under the build-wireshark directory.

NOTE:

If cmake -B build cannot find the WIRESHARK_INCLUDE_PATH, you have to provide the path manually by adding the -DWIRESHARK_INCLUDE_PATH=/path/to/wireshark/include option.

Copy to the plugin directory

1. Run the Wireshark and click the menu Help - About Wireshark - Plugins, and then you can find the plugin directory. For example, it's /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/plugins/3.2/epan on Ubuntu 20.04. Then, copy the dissector into that directory:

2. Copy the dissector into that directory.

sudo cp ./build/pulsar-dissector.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/wireshark/plugins/3.2/epan/

To verify whether it has been loaded successfully, restart the Wireshark and then you can see the plugin in the plugin list: