The Ethereal menus

This menu item brings up the file open dialog box that allows you to load a capture file for viewing. It is discussed in more detail in the Section called The File Open dialog box.

This menu item closes the current capture. If you have not saved the capture, it is lost.

This menu item saves the current capture. If you have not set a default capture file name (perhaps with the -w <capfile> option), Ethereal pops up the Save Capture File As dialog box (which is discussed further in the Section called The Save Capture File As dialog box).

	Note!
	If you have already saved the current capture, this menu will be greyed out.

	Note!
	You cannot save a live capture while it is in progress. You must stop the capture in order to save.

This menu item allows you to save the current capture file to whatever file you would like. It pops up the Save Capture File As dialog box (which is discussed further in the Section called The Save Capture File As dialog box).

This menu item allows you to reload the current capture file. This menu item is no longer needed, and may be removed in future releases of Ethereal

This menu item allows you to print all the packets in the capture file. It pops up the Ethereal Print dialog box (which is discussed further in the Section called Printing packets).

This menu item allows you to print the current packet.

This menu item allows you to quit from Ethereal. In the current release of Ethereal (0.8.19), Ethereal silently exits even if you have not saved the current capture file. This may be changed in a future release of Ethereal.

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to find a frame by entering an Ethereal display filter. There is further information on finding frames in the Section called Finding frames.

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to specify a frame to goto by frame number.

This menu item "marks" the currently selected frame. See the Section called The Save Capture File As dialog box for more information about saving marked frames.

This menu item "marks" all frames. See the Section called The Save Capture File As dialog box for more information about saving marked frames.

This menu item "unmarks" all marked frames.

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to set preferences for many parameters that control Ethereal. You can also save your preferences so Ethereal will use them the next time you start it. More detail is provided in the Section called Ethereal preferences

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to create and edit capture filters. You can name filters, and you can save them for future use. More detail on this subject is provided in the Section called Defining and saving filters

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to create and edit display filters. You can name filters, and you can save them for future use. More detail on this subject is provided in the Section called Defining and saving filters

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to enable or disable the dissection of individual protocols edit.

This menu item brings up the Capture Preferences dialog box (discussed further in the Section called Capturing packets with Ethereal) and allows you to start capturing packets.

This menu item stops the currently running capture.

This menu item brings up a dialog box that controls the way that Ethereal displays some information about packets. Examples include the way timestamps are handled, whether addresses and other numbers are translated, and so forth. This is further discussed in the Section called Display Options.

This menu item allows you to select all packets that have a matching value in the field selected in the tree view pane (middle pane).

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you color packets in the packet list pane according to filter expressions you choose. It can be very useful for spotting certain types of packets.

Ethereal keeps a list of all the protocol subtrees that are expanded, and uses it to ensure that the correct subtrees are expanded when you display a packet. This menu item collapses the tree view of all packets in the capture list.

This menu item expands all subtrees in all packets in the capture.

This menu item brings up the selected packet in a separate window. The separate window shows only the tree view and byte view panes.

This menu item allows the user to force ethereal to decode certain packets as a particular protocol.

This menu item brings up a dialog box that allows you to manage Ethereal plugins. There are very few plugins todate.

This menu item brings up a separate window and displays all the TCP segments captured that are on the same TCP connection as a selected packet. The data in the TCP stream is sorted into order, with duplicate segments removed, and it is then displayed in ascii. You can change the format is you desire.

This menu item allows the user to force ethereal to decode certain packets as a particular protocol.

This menu item brings up a statistics window that shows information about the packets captured.

This menu item displays a hierarchical tree of packet statistics.

This menu item brings up a basic help system.

This menu item brings up an information window that provides some simple information on Ethereal.