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On Jun 10, 2022, at 1:59 PM, Denis Ovsienko via tcpdump-workers
<tcpdump-workers@lists.tcpdump.org> wrote:
> Below is a draft of such a file format. It addresses the following
> needs:
> * There is a header with a signature string to avoid false positive
> detection as some other file type that begins exactly with particular
> bytecode (ran into this during disassembly experiments).
> * There are version fields to address possible future changes to the
> encoding (either backward-compatible or not).
Is the idea that a change that's backward-compatible (so that code that handles
the new format needs no changes to handle the old format, but code that handles
only the old format can't handle the new format) would involve a change to the
minor version number, but a change that's not backward-compatible (so that to
handle both versions would require two code paths for the two versions) would
involve a change to the major version number?
> File format:
>
> 0 1 2 3
> 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
> | 'c' | 'B' | 'P' | 'F' |
> +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Is the 'c' part of the retronym "cBPF" for the "classic BPF" instruction set,
as opposed to the eBPF instruction set? (I didn't find any file format for
saving eBPF programs, so this format could be used for that as well, with the
magic number 'e' 'B' 'P' 'F'.)
> Type=0x02 (LINKTYPE_ID)
> Length=4
> Value=<integer, link-layer header type>
This could be 2 bytes long - pcapng limits link-layer types to 16 bits, and
pcap now can use the upper 16 bits of the link-layer type field for other
purposes.
> Type=0x03 (LINKTYPE_NAME)
> Length is variable
> Value=<ASCII string, the link-layer header type name>
E.g. either its LINKTYPE_xxx name or its DLT_xxx name?
> Type=0x04 (COMMENT)
> Length is variabe
> Value=<UTF-8 string, comment or the generating software description>
"Generating software description" as in the code that generated the BPF program?
> Type=0x05 (TIMESTAMP)
> Length=8
> Value=<integer, Unix timestamp>
Is this the time the code was generated?
Is it a 64-bit time_t, or a 32-bit time_t and a 32-bit microseconds/nanoseconds
value? I'd recommend the former, unless we expect classic BPF to be dead by
2038.
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