Technical Support

Important

Tcpreplay is free. I don't charge for it or for technical support. You can download my code and look at it, even make modifications and not share them with the rest of the world. You can embed it in a commercial product and not have to pay me royalties even though I've spent hundreds of hours over a period of 6+ years working on Tcpreplay. Ohloh claims that there is over $400,000 worth of effort in Tcpreplay, so getting it for free is a pretty damn good deal if you ask me.

I've spent a lot of time writing documentation. On the Tcpreplay website, man pages, readme's and the like. I'm quite proud of the fact that Tcpreplay is one of the better documented open source projects out there. Hence, there is a pretty good chance that the answer to your question has already been documented!

But, there's a downside to all this; I'm a bit acidic in person and I have a very low tolerance for stupid questions or people who are lazy. The quickest way to put me in a sour mood is not give me the information requested below. I'm constantly amazed by how many people ask me questions and don't even bother to tell me what version they're using!

What this all means is that if you ask stupid questions or questions which are covered in the documentation you do so at your own peril. This is especially true if I read your email before I've had my morning coffee.

Of course, if you want to pay me for technical support, then I promise to be nice and answer the stupidest/laziest questions with a smile. Just email me directly and we can work out per-issue or a yearly support contract. But if you're looking for free support for the software you got for free, then I expect you to put forth a little effort so that I can quickly and accurately answer your question.

Lastly, I'm a big fan of Eric Raymond's How to ask questions the smart way. It's a great document which explains how users (that means you) should ask questions of people like me.

Anyways, with that said, if you do have a problem, please don't hesitate to ask for help. Even in my most grumpy mood I promise not to bite. :)

Overview

If you haven't yet already, be sure to read the documentation. You may also want to check out the currently open tickets to see if your problem is a known issue.

It's also worth reading the mailing list archives since there is a good chance that someone else has asked this question before. If none of these options provide you with an answer, I suggest using the mailing list. Note that due to spammers trying to use the list, in order to send an email to the mailing list you must first subscribe to the list. If you think you found a bug or have a feature request, please open a ticket.

Or, if IRC is you thing, you can check out the #tcpreplay channel on irc.freenode.org. I'm not always there and when I am there, I may be too busy to answer, but it never hurts to try!

What Info We Need

In either case (opening a ticket or emailing the list), we will require some information about your problem in order to help:

If your problem has to do with COMPILING tcpreplay:

• Version of tcpreplay you are trying to compile
• Which compiler and version you're using
• Version and installed location (like /usr or /usr/local) of libnet, libdnet, libpcap and Autogen installed on your system
• Platform (Red Hat Linux 9 on x86, Solaris 7 on SPARC, OS X on PPC, etc)
• ./configure arguments
• Contents of config.log
• Output from 'make'
• Any additional information you think that would be useful.

If your problem has to do with RUNNING tcpreplay or one of the sub-tools:

• Version information (output of -V)

• Command line used (options and arguments)
• Platform (Red Hat Linux 9 on Intel, Solaris 7 on SPARC, etc)
• Make & model of the network card(s) and driver(s) version
• Error message (if available) and/or description of problem
• If possible, attach the pcap file used (compressed with bzip2 or gzip preferred)
• The core dump or backtrace if applicable
• Detailed description of your problem or what you are trying to accomplish
• If your problem some how relates to a tcpprep cache file, you should include that too

Please Note: The author of tcpreplay primarily uses OS X; hence, if you're reporting an issue on another platform, it is important that you give very detailed information as I may not be able to reproduce your issue.

Emailing The Author

Please do not email the author directly with your questions. Doing so prevents others from potentially helping you and your question/answer from showing up in the list archives. Seriously, directly emailing the author is strongly frowned upon. Instead, please use either the tcpreplay-users mailing list or IRC channel.

Opening a Ticket

If you would like to report a bug or feature request, please use the New Ticket form. Due to a recent upgrade of the ticking system, you no longer need to register an account and login.

Important: The ticketing system is for bugs and feature requests only, if you need help using tcpreplay please use the tcpreplay-users mailing list or IRC.