# Compiling libpcap on AIX
* Autoconf is expected to work everywhere.
* Neither AIX lex nor AIX yacc nor AIX m4 are suitable.
## AIX 7.1
* libpcap build fails with rpcapd enabled.
* GNU M4 1.4.17 works.
* flex 2.6.4 and GNU Bison 3.5.1 work.
* CMake 3.16.0 works.
* GCC 8.3.0 works, XL C 12.1.0 works.
## AIX 7.2
* libpcap build fails with rpcapd enabled.
* GNU M4 1.4.17 works.
* flex 2.5.35 and GNU Bison 3.0.4 work.
* GCC 7.2.0 works, XL C 13.1.3 works.
## Other AIX-related information
Using BPF:
(1) AIX 4.x's version of BPF is undocumented and somewhat unstandard; the
current BPF support code includes changes that should work around
that; it appears to compile and work on at least one AIX 4.3.3
machine.
Note that the BPF driver and the "/dev/bpf" devices might not exist
on your machine; AIX's tcpdump loads the driver and creates the
devices if they don't already exist. Our libpcap should do the
same, and the configure script should detect that it's on an AIX
system and choose BPF even if the devices aren't there.
Also note that tcpdump _binary_ compiled on AIX 4 may have a problem
doing the initial loading of the BPF driver if copied to AIX 5 and
run there (GH #52). tcpdump binary natively compiled on AIX 5 should
not have this issue.
(2) If libpcap doesn't compile on your machine when configured to use
BPF, or if the workarounds fail to make it work correctly, you
should send to
[email protected] a detailed bug
report (if the compile fails, send us the compile error messages;
if it compiles but fails to work correctly, send us as detailed as
possible a description of the symptoms, including indications of the
network link-layer type being wrong or time stamps being wrong).
If you fix the problems yourself, please submit a patch by forking
the branch at
https://github.com/the-tcpdump-group/libpcap/tree/master
and issuing a pull request, so we can incorporate the fixes into the
next release.
If you don't fix the problems yourself, you can, as a workaround,
make libpcap use DLPI instead of BPF.
This can be done by specifying the flag:
--with-pcap=dlpi
to the "configure" script for libpcap.
If you use DLPI:
(1) It is a good idea to have the latest version of the DLPI driver on
your system, since certain versions may be buggy and cause your AIX
system to crash. DLPI is included in the fileset bos.rte.tty. I
found that the DLPI driver that came with AIX 4.3.2 was buggy, and
had to upgrade to bos.rte.tty 4.3.2.4:
lslpp -l bos.rte.tty
bos.rte.tty 4.3.2.4 COMMITTED Base TTY Support and Commands
Updates for AIX filesets can be obtained from:
ftp://service.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/
These updates can be installed with the smit program.
(2) After compiling libpcap, you need to make sure that the DLPI driver
is loaded. Type:
strload -q -d dlpi
If the result is:
dlpi: yes
then the DLPI driver is loaded correctly.
If it is:
dlpi: no
Then you need to type:
strload -f /etc/dlpi.conf
Check again with strload -q -d dlpi that the dlpi driver is loaded.
Alternatively, you can uncomment the lines for DLPI in
/etc/pse.conf and reboot the machine; this way DLPI will always
be loaded when you boot your system.
(3) There appears to be a problem in the DLPI code in some versions of
AIX, causing a warning about DL_PROMISC_MULTI failing; this might
be responsible for DLPI not being able to capture outgoing packets.
