WScout: FAQ

News:

2010-01-13
WScout 2.3 released!

2008-07-31
WScout 2.2 released!

Location: WScout / FAQ

Links:

Frequently Asked Questions

General

What is WScout?
Have a look at the About page.
Why this name?
I (i.e. WScout’s creator) needed a tool to browse huge wireless traces. That is, traces that were more than 10 GiB large. It did not need to have an extensive set of features. All I wanted was to be able to visualize those traces for debugging purposes. I therefore designed WScout as a kind of program to make a reconnaissance of traces before doing harder stuff with them. Hence the “Scout” part of the name. The “W” is because I worked with *W*ireless traces.
Which protocols does WScout support?
WScout understands PCAP headers (of course) and IEEE 802.11 related headers (raw IEEE 802.11, AVS, Prism, LLC, IPv4, IPv6). Nothing in its design precludes it however to understand other protocols. If you are interested in extending WScout to support more protocols, please have a look at doc/HACKING and give feedback to WScout’s developers.

Among the protocols that lacks much, let’s cite Ethernet or TCP! ;-)
What systems does WScout support?
WScout was designed using standard C++ and portable libraries. This means WScout should run fine on most systems (e.g. GNU/Linux, WhateverBSD, Mac OS, Windows, …).

WScout is however exclusively tested on Debian GNU/Linux (amd64 and powerpc). Which means you might experience problems on other systems, which the developers might not be aware of. In this case, please give feedback to them so they can fix it. Anyway, there should be no major obstacle to WScout’s portability.
What about tcpdump, tshark, Wireshark, Ethereal, whatever…?
Each of these tools is great! Some of them are killer applications that provide many incontrovertible features. However, to the extent of my knowledge, it is impossible to efficiently browse 10 GiB traces with either of them. (No, redirecting tshark into a huge text file is not what I call efficient browsing.)

Furthermore, modifying these existing tools would need an amount of knowledge about these tools I am not willing to learn.

Installation

What are WScout’s requirements?
WScout needs:
- A standard compliant C++ compiler. WScout’s developers use GCC.
- GNU make.
  Or any other make that supports pattern rules using ‘%’.
- The Boost C++ libraries.
  More specifically:
  - date_time,
  - foreach,
  - format,
  - conversion/lexical_cast,
  - optional,
  - smart_ptr,
  - tokenizer.
- Trolltech’s Qt library, at least version 4.3.
  You will also need some tools provided with this library: the Meta-Object Compiler (moc) and the Resource Compiler (rcc). On some systems (e.g. Debian GNU/Linux) they are provided in separate packages.
How do I install WScout?
WScout’s packaging follows the GNU conventions. An installation documentation is provided in the INSTALL file in the package’s root directory. However, with a standard system, the following commands should do the trick:
```
mkdir _build
cd _build
../configure
make
make install
make check
```
On some systems, you might have to customize the configure ipt’s invocation. E.g.
```
mkdir _build
cd _build
../configure CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/include/qt4
make
make install
make check
```
Why does WScout’s configure check for GMP and other unnecessary stuff?
Actually WScout’s configure does not check that. But WScout might embed a package called WiPal, which configure script check for GMP and other things. However, these are optionals, and the build should be fine despite you might be missing these packages.
configure complains it did not find library X?
Either library X is not installed on your system, either your system is not properly configured, so the library cannot be found.

You may use the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS variables to correct this behavior.

E.g., run
```
./configure CPPFLAGS=-I/custom/path/include/qt4 \
         LDFLAGS=-L/custom/path/lib
```
As an example, on my system (Debian GNU/Linux), I invoke
```
./configure CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/include/qt4
```
configure complains it found library X’s headers, but is unable to link?
Most probably library X is installed but its binaries are in a non-standard place. Use the LDFLAGS variable as described previously.
configure complains library X’s headers are unusable, despite successful linking?
Most probably library X is installed but its headers are in a non-standard place. Use the CPPFLAGS variable as described previously.

Troubleshooting

Do you have a list of WScout’s bugs?
No. We are not aware of any bug in WScout. That is why reporting unknown bugs to the package’s maintainers is so important! :-D
I have found a bug, what should I do?
Report it to the package’s maintainers.
I would really love having feature X implemented!
Then, implement it! ;-) More seriously, unless this is a ridiculously simple feature to implement, this is unlikely we will do it for you. But giving feedback to the package’s maintainers about the features you want is important. So we know if important features are missing.

If you want to contribute to WScout and implement some features, have a look at doc/HACKING. Again, contact the package’s maintainers so they can help you implement new features.
I have a question this file did not answer!
Mail the package’s maintainers.