The replay tests marked sharkd_present skip gracefully without the
binary, but four manager-level tests (cap eviction, in-use protection,
single spawn under concurrency, filter-error mapping) run entirely
against fakes and died on the acquire-time PATH check instead - install
wireshark-common (which ships /usr/bin/sharkd on the Ubuntu runner) so
the real-engine tests actually run in CI, and patch the which() check in
the fake-session tests so the suite stays green on machines without
sharkd.
Review-driven session/transport fixes (each reproduced live against
sharkd 4.6.7 before fixing):
- raise the RPC stream limit to 16 MB: a full 1000-row frames page
measures ~190 KB against the 64 KB StreamReader default, which failed
the request with a 500 and desynchronized the resident session; a
line-over-limit ValueError is now treated as a transport failure
- verify JSON-RPC reply ids: a timed-out request's late reply was
served as the next request's answer; timeouts, dead pipes, malformed
and stale replies now kill the session for good instead
- make check-spawn atomic under one manager lock: concurrent requests
for the same pcap double-spawned sharkd and leaked the loser (process
plus /tmp scratch copy) forever
- refcount sessions and evict idle only (LRU, cap raised 8 -> 16): a
tag with more sources than the cap respawned every source on every
request, and concurrent requests could get their session killed
mid-RPC (spurious 502)
- map FilterError to sharkd's filter rejection (-13002) only; other
engine failures with a filter set are 502, not a client 400
- detail: accept an optional frame_number to disambiguate
same-microsecond frames (ts is not unique within a pcap); drop the
-8003 -> 404 mapping (the range is validated locally, engine errors
are real faults); a failed hex read is a 404 instead of "hex": null
- a pcap deleted mid-request is a 404, not a 500; the pcap-sized
scratch copy runs off the event loop; server shutdown kills every
resident session and drops its scratch directory
- pin the packet-list layout through scratch-HOME Wireshark
preferences: the column indexes are a contract the server owns
(protocol-level column negotiation is rejected by sharkd 4.6.x)
Range contract change (WebUI moved to an always-flat list): the merged
frame list is returned in full, deliberately uncapped - truncated and
per-second buckets are removed, frame_count always equals
len(frames), and rendering cost is the client's concern (the window
endpoint remains the incremental path).
Narrows the merged frame stream to one capture source BEFORE counting,
slicing and bucketing (frame_count / frames | buckets all recomputed on
the narrowed set), AND-composing with the display filter. A pure
identity filter applied before any engine work — only the selected
link's pcap gets a sharkd pass, so link+filter is cheaper than filter
alone.
Two boundaries by contract with the Web UI:
- sources[] stays the tag's stable inventory: every capture source
listed with engine-free TOTAL counts, unaffected by link/filter — a
source dropdown must not shrink when the view narrows (this also
settles sources[].count on total counts rather than post-filter
matches, which no spec ever required)
- an unknown link_id matches nothing: frame_count 0, start null, empty
frames/buckets — the same shape as a zero-match display filter,
deliberately not a 404; an empty link param is treated as absent
sharkd (the Wireshark daemon) is now the single decode engine — the
tshark/PDML path is gone, and without sharkd every replay endpoint
returns 501 (no degraded mode: one engine, one rendering shape for the
Web UI).
- Frame entries gain packet-list columns from sharkd's frames RPC:
src/dst/proto/info plus the Wireshark coloring hints bg/fg
- range and frames accept ?filter=<display filter>, applied before
counting and slicing; invalid expressions are 400 carrying sharkd's
original text; filters travel as single argv-style elements, capped
at 2000 chars; filtered frames keep their original pcap frame numbers
- frame detail returns sharkd's protocol tree with keys renamed into
the REST contract (element/label/name/filter_expr/pos+size/expert/
generated/children): a census-verified closed key set, values
untouched, unknown keys passed through verbatim, Wireshark-internal
hf ids dropped. filter_expr gives the UI click-to-filter; pos/size
drives hex highlighting (hex still read straight from the pcap)
- one resident 'sharkd -' session per source pcap: lazy spawn, /tmp
scratch copy + scratch HOME (hardened profiles), per-request
(mtime,size) validation with respawn, LRU bound, per-session lock,
per-RPC timeout, bounded close
Timeline backbone (gate, record-header scan, merge ordering, canonical
ts strings, hex reads) stays plain Python — identity and ordering never
depend on the engine.
Markers on different links sharing a tag form one distributed capture
session. Once every marker under the tag is paused (409 otherwise), three
read-only endpoints replay it:
- GET .../markers/tags/{tag}/replay/range merges the per-marker pcaps by
scanning 16-byte record headers only (no tshark) into a timestamp-
ordered frame list (per-second buckets above a 5000-frame cap)
- GET .../replay/frames?ts=&window_ms= returns frames in [T, T+window];
an empty window is a normal empty array
- GET .../replay/frame/detail lazily decodes one frame the user opened:
raw bytes for the hex view read straight from the pcap, protocol tree
from 'tshark -T pdml' mapped isomorphically to JSON (every attribute
survives, values stay strings). tshark reads a /tmp scratch copy with a
scratch HOME — hardened profiles deny it the project directory.
Sort key is (ts, source file, frame number): ts is not unique across a
merge. The ts parameter round-trips as the exact string from the frame
list. Round-trip tests pin the PDML→JSON fidelity (element count and
attribute coverage).
