OS X / nRF Sniffer v2 / Wireshark 2.5.0 Crash

[mstrouse]

Hey Everyone ... Looking for some ideas / help with crash involving nRF Sniffer v2 and Wireshark. Specifically I have an older White MacBook that I use for sniffing and nRF Connect. Recently I tried to update everything to the new(er) version v2 of the sniffer, and while the install went fine, Wireshark crashes every time I try to *start* a "capture".

Specific Setup is:

2010 MacBook (4GB Ram) / El Cap 10.11.6 / Wireshark 2.5.0 / Pyserial 3.4 / Python 2.7.10 / JLink 6.16c / Nordic Dongle (pca10031) with the correct firmware.

Long story short, when I install the Nordic python sniffer files in the "extcap" directory, Wireshark will crash when I try to start a capture (NOT at startup / launch). If I remove the nRF sniffer files, Wireshark runs normally (i.e. when I start a capture on say an ethernet port, it works correctly without crashing). I could post a crash report, but I'd rather not ... essentially it's showing a bus error (exc_bad_access) which seems to indicate that Wireshark is trying access something in memory that it shouldn't ... Anyone have any thoughts?

[homeslashbjrn]

Same problem for me, using the following configuration

• Mac OS 10.11.6 El Capitan
• Python 2.7.10
• pyserial 3.4
• SEGGER J-Link V6.16c
• Wireshark 2.4.5 (v2.4.5-0-g153e867)

Haven't managed to get it work. As far as I remember, downgrading pyserial (regarding this topic) isn't working either.

[David Edwin]

Try the patched python files posted in this answer.

[mstrouse]

I have not tried this yet (am about to) ... any idea of how one would normally roll back pyserial to an earlier version? Manually delete and then re-install?

[mstrouse]

So, no joy ... tried the patched python files, and it still crashes when I start the capture. I did not do a "diff" on the 2 file sets, so I have no idea what the patched set might have done differently. And again, if I remove the nordic files form the extcap dir, the crashing goes away ... I feel that it's got to be something related to the nordic python code, and/or perhaps pyserial.

[David Edwin]

Can you try the OS X Sniffer for BTLE which uses the native serial driver for OS X ? This should give us some more clues on the issue.

[mstrouse]

So I've tried this, and it works (it's what I was using before I tried to upgrade to the new V2 of the sniffer. Not sure that helps much ... it's a much older version of wireshark, and uses a 3rd party interface (from RK)...