Related command line tools
C.8. idl2eth: Creating dissectors from Corba IDL files
In an ideal world idl2eth would be mentioned in the users guide in passing and documented in the developers guide. As the developers guide has not yet been completed it will be documented here.
C.8.1. What is it?
As you have probably guessed from the name, idl2eth takes a user specified IDL file and attempts to build a dissector that can decode the IDL traffic over GIOP. The resulting file is "C" code, that should compile okay as an ethereal dissector.
idl2eth basically parses the data struct given to it by the omniidl compiler, and using the GIOP API available in
It consists of 4 main files.
README.idl2eth | This document |
ethereal_be.py | The main compiler backend |
ethereal_gen.py | A helper class, that generates the C code. |
idl2eth | A simple shell script wrapper that the end user should use to generate the |
| dissector from the IDL file(s). |
C.8.2. Why do this?
It is important to understand what CORBA traffic looks like over GIOP/IIOP, and to help build a tool that can assist in troubleshooting CORBA interworking. This was especially the case after see- ing a lot of discussions about how particular IDL types are represented inside an octet stream.
I have also had comments/feedback that this tool would be good for say a CORBA class when teaching students what CORBA traffic looks like "on the wire".
It is also COOL to work on a great Open Source project such as the case with "Ethereal" ( ht- tp://www.ethereal.com )
C.8.3. How to use idl2eth
To use the idl2eth to generate ethereal dissectors, you need the following:
Prerequisites to using idl2eth
1.Python must be installed. See http://python.org/
2.omniidl from the the omniORB package must be available. See http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/
3.Of course you need ethereal installed to compile the code and tweak it if required. idl2eth is part of the standard Ethereal distribution
To use idl2eth to generate an ethereal dissector from an idl file use the following procedure:
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