Hi all, this is to announce the first release of 'pksh', the Packet Shell, that is a hack of the popular 'tcsh' for packets, bytes, hosts and protocols counts mainly implemented to include passive network monitoring functionalities into a shell.
So 'pksh' is a shell. No, no! 'pksh' is a pcap-based network sniffer, like 'tcpdump' and 'ntop'. No, no again! 'pksh' is both a shell, a network sniffer, a query language for network monitoring and finally a rendering engine to display in a form readable for humans and system administrators all traffic on LAN segments. It aims to give on character-based terminals the same level of information 'ntop' already provides via its embedded web interface. Contrary to most text-based sniffers, 'pksh' does not continuosly fill the terminal with packets/bytes/protocols information, but it allows the user to perform his daily job at the shell level and take a look at network only via a set of commands implemented as extensions to native tcsh's built-ins. Morevover the output 'pksh' provides can be filtered/sorted/paged/mailed/othered using all native Unix commands available at the shell level. Luca and me agreed to host the project on 'ntop' web server, and to be quickly integrated into family of ntop's technologies and products, but he is so busy these days and his support is quite limited. Therefore the first release will have minimal web/mailing lists support. I set just a temporary download area at: http://pksh.tecsiel.it http://82.187.228.118 where you can find further information and the source code, obviously released under GLPv3, in a tar-gzipped distribution file named pksh-0.1.0.tar.gz I need your feedback to understand the need of the community for such tool in order to continue the effort to add support for more network interfaces, more protocols, more built-ins, more data rendering, more of other. Enjoy /rocco -- Rocco Carbone mail-to: <rocco /at/ tecsiel /dot/ it> Pisa Italy Life is in the details In other words, you are welcome to use, share and improve me. You are forbidden to forbid anyone else to use, share and improve what I gave you. _______________________________________________ Ntop mailing list [email protected] http://listgateway.unipi.it/mailman/listinfo/ntop
