Sniffer won't show on Wireshark

[Rafael Fajardo]

HI, I'm Rafael Fajardo a student at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University . I am using the nRF51 Dongle and following the Sniffer User Guide, but when I got to the final step finalizing the set up (just after enabling the sniffer interface toolbar and adding its profile), I am unable to see the Sniffer as an interface. I am using the Sniffer version 2.0.0-3.beta, the JLink included in the Sniffer zip (v6_34b) and the OS I'm using is Ubuntu 18.04. I can provide more information if needed. Thanks in advance.

[Sigurd]

Hi,

Please take a look at the troubleshooting chapter in the nRF Sniffer User Guide v2.2., go through the steps in chapter 6.1 "The nRF sniffer is not listed in the Wireshark interface"

[Rafael Fajardo]

Hi Sigurd,

I already went through those steps, I had to chmod the nrf_sniffer.py script to give it x permissions, and run the script with the --extcap-interfaces, I'll attach an image with its output in case you need to see it. 

[Sigurd]

Have you unzip'ed the ZIP's extcap content to the Wireshark Extcap folder, so it looks something like this?

Do you see the LD1 blinking very fast?

[Rafael Fajardo]

This is the content of the wireshark extcap folder:

I created the nrf_snifferv2_0 folder to place the remaining content of the sniffer v2 zip to emulate the result on the User Guide. The rest of files were on the folder by default.

The dongle blinks twice per second more less when I power up a beacon, and doesn't when I turn the beacon off (stays as a blue light), so I assumed it really is detecting the packets.

[Sigurd]

Hi,

Please make sure that the dongle is actually using the Segger V6.34b firmware. Start JLinkConfig.exe , for me this is located in the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\SEGGER\JLink_V634b. Then replace the FW like this:

You should also verify that you are using python version 2.7.x:

python --version 

Also check that the pyserial 3.4 for Python 2.7.x is installed:

If it's still not working, you could try the solution in this post: Find the file "nrf_sniffer.py" in Wireshark's extcap folder. On line 128, change the write_data parameter from "False" to "True" as follows:

devices = UART.find_sniffer(write_data=True)  # Try non-intrusive search, set argument to True for intrusive search

[Rafael Fajardo]

Hi, I couldn´t find JLinkConfig in the Linux instalation, but the JLinkExe shows that version 

Python and Pyserial version are the right ones

I changed the line you propose but the device still won't show on wireshark

[Sigurd]

Make sure that your user is a part of the dialout group, so that you can access the ttyACM0 as a normal user:

sudo usermod -a -G dialout MY_USERNAME

[Rafael Fajardo]

Couldn't get it to work after giving my user the permission, but running Wireshark as Superuser (sudo wireshark) I finally could see the interface and it recieves and shows the packets properly, so problem resolved I guess.

[DiBosco]

I have exactly the same issue. Couldn't get it to work on Windows at all, Python is an utter mess there. At least on Linux the install is much easier, but no matter what I do, even giving guest permissions to all the python files, only running as root will have it work.