You are working on a Rails app and it communicates with a web service. You run into communication problems. To figure it out, you can spit out debugging information at either end or you can slog though a session of tcpdump and its hundreds of options.
Naw, you now know of a much simpler way: ngrep.
1: Go get and install it. http://ngrep.sourceforge.net/download.html
2: Use the command by passing it your interface name (-d lo0), and the port on which you want to watch traffic (port 3000).
sudo ngrep -Wbyline -d lo0 port 3000 |
Then, if needed, pipe to normal grep until you only see what you want:
sudo ngrep -Wbyline -d lo0 port 3000 | grep -v "noise" | grep "bad-ass unix tools" |
Here's the output of a sample run. I'm running the command in a terminal window, while I post a form with my browser or Net:HTTP. The output is split into packets. Here's what you get:
Enjoy!
Thanks for the heads up, it looks interesting. Here’s a list of simillar tools we recommend for apache support.
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/WatchingHttpHeaders
It’s funny that you grep out the svn folders by reflex when ever you go to grep something. I do the exact same thing even when I grep non svn projects.
@noodl: Thanks for the link.
@Scott: Damn, you busted me! :) I think you caught that little scrub before I noticed it and update the post. A lot of my Unix knowledge exists in my fingers; not by brain. Vim is a great example of that. Thanks for the comment.
@ scott, heh, i noticed that too but let it drop. back when i used linux on the desktop i found this useful http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/contrib/client-side/wcgrep but the mac’s find command doesn’t like the arguments in this script. are you aware of a mac suitable replacement?
The Windows version is not distributed with the required libraries. Are you expecting the users to chase them on the net?
This is awesomeness!
“ack” is a really nice SVN-aware grep replacement with many more features.
http://petdance.com/ack/
ngrep looks like another great tool!