pcap_breakloop(3pcap) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

PCAP_BREAKLOOP(3PCAP)                              PCAP_BREAKLOOP(3PCAP)

NAME         top

       pcap_breakloop - force a pcap_dispatch() or pcap_loop() call to
       return

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <pcap/pcap.h>

       void pcap_breakloop(pcap_t *);

DESCRIPTION         top

       pcap_breakloop() sets a flag that will force pcap_dispatch(3PCAP)
       or pcap_loop(3PCAP) to return rather than looping; they will
       return the number of packets that have been processed so far, or
       PCAP_ERROR_BREAK if no packets have been processed so far.  If
       the loop is currently blocked waiting for packets to arrive,
       pcap_breakloop() will also, on some platforms, wake up the thread
       that is blocked.  In this version of libpcap, the only platforms
       on which a wakeup is caused by pcap_breakloop() are Linux and
       Windows, and the wakeup will only be caused when capturing on
       network interfaces; it will not be caused on other operating
       systems, and will not be caused on any OS when capturing on other
       types of devices.

       This routine is safe to use inside a signal handler on UNIX or a
       console control handler on Windows, or in a thread other than the
       one in which the loop is running, as it merely sets a flag that
       is checked within the loop and, on some platforms, performs a
       signal-safe and thread-safe API call.

       The flag is checked in loops reading packets from the OS - a
       signal by itself will not necessarily terminate those loops - as
       well as in loops processing a set of packets returned by the OS.
       Note that if you are catching signals on UNIX systems that
       support restarting system calls after a signal, and calling
       pcap_breakloop() in the signal handler, you must specify, when
       catching those signals, that system calls should NOT be restarted
       by that signal.  Otherwise, if the signal interrupted a call
       reading packets in a live capture, when your signal handler
       returns after calling pcap_breakloop(), the call will be
       restarted, and the loop will not terminate until more packets
       arrive and the call completes.

       Note also that, in a multi-threaded application, if one thread is
       blocked in pcap_dispatch(), pcap_loop(), pcap_next(3PCAP), or
       pcap_next_ex(3PCAP), a call to pcap_breakloop() in a different
       thread will only unblock that thread on the platforms and capture
       devices listed above.

       If a non-zero packet buffer timeout is set on the pcap_t, and you
       are capturing on a network interface, the thread will be
       unblocked with the timeout expires.  This is not guaranteed to
       happen unless at least one packet has arrived; the only platforms
       on which it happens are macOS, the BSDs, Solaris 11, AIX, Tru64
       UNIX, and Windows.

       If you want to ensure that the loop will eventually be unblocked
       on any other platforms, or unblocked when capturing on a device
       other than a network interface, you will need to use whatever
       mechanism the OS provides for breaking a thread out of blocking
       calls in order to unblock the thread, such as thread cancellation
       or thread signalling in systems that support POSIX threads.

       Note that if pcap_breakloop() unblocks the thread capturing
       packets, and you are running on a platform that supports packet
       buffering, there may be packets in the buffer that arrived before
       pcap_breakloop() were called but that weren't yet provided to
       libpcap, those packets will not have been processed by
       pcap_dispatch() or pcap_loop().  If pcap_breakloop() was called
       in order to terminate the capture process, then, in order to
       process those packets, you would have to call pcap_dispatch() one
       time in order to process the last batch of packets.  This may
       block until the packet buffer timeout expires, so a non-zero
       packet buffer timeout must be used.

       Note that pcap_next() and pcap_next_ex() will, on some platforms,
       loop reading packets from the OS; that loop will not necessarily
       be terminated by a signal, so pcap_breakloop() should be used to
       terminate packet processing even if pcap_next() or pcap_next_ex()
       is being used.

       pcap_breakloop() does not guarantee that no further packets will
       be processed by pcap_dispatch() or pcap_loop() after it is
       called; at most one more packet might be processed.

       If PCAP_ERROR_BREAK is returned from pcap_dispatch() or
       pcap_loop(), the flag is cleared, so a subsequent call will
       resume reading packets.  If a positive number is returned, the
       flag is not cleared, so a subsequent call will return
       PCAP_ERROR_BREAK and clear the flag.

BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY         top

       This function became available in libpcap release 0.8.1.

       In releases prior to libpcap 1.10.0, pcap_breakloop() will not
       wake up a blocked thread on any platform.

SEE ALSO         top

       pcap(3PCAP)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the libpcap (packet capture library)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.tcpdump.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this
       manual page, see ⟨http://www.tcpdump.org/#patches⟩.  This page
       was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/the-tcpdump-group/libpcap.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2023-12-13.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

                             8 December 2022       PCAP_BREAKLOOP(3PCAP)