From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 5 12:43:59 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5450816A417 for ; Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:43:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from iaccounts@ibctech.ca) Received: from pearl.ibctech.ca (pearl.ibctech.ca [208.70.104.210]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D4D6713C43E for ; Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:43:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from iaccounts@ibctech.ca) Received: (qmail 97182 invoked by uid 1002); 5 Oct 2007 12:43:58 -0000 Received: from iaccounts@ibctech.ca by pearl.ibctech.ca by uid 89 with qmail-scanner-1.22 (spamassassin: 2.64. Clear:RC:1(208.70.104.100):. Processed in 11.848542 secs); 05 Oct 2007 12:43:58 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.30.110?) (steve@ibctech.ca@208.70.104.100) by pearl.ibctech.ca with (DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA encrypted) SMTP; 5 Oct 2007 12:43:46 -0000 Message-ID: <47063190.3050502@ibctech.ca> Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 08:44:00 -0400 From: Steve Bertrand User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Windows/20070728) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <4704DFF3.9040200@ibctech.ca> <20071003200013.GD45244@demeter.hydra> <47054A1D.2000701@ibctech.ca> <200710042222.25488.wundram@beenic.net> <47054C2E.8040304@ibctech.ca> <20071003225108.GB46149@demeter.hydra> In-Reply-To: <20071003225108.GB46149@demeter.hydra> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: Managing very large files X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2007 12:43:59 -0000 >> The reason for the massive file size was my haste in running out of the >> office on Friday and forgetting to kill the tcpdump process before the >> weekend began. > > Sounds like you may want a Perl script to automate managing your > tcpdumps. 99% of the time I use tcpdump for less than one minute to verify the presence or lack thereof of ingress/egress traffic on a box or network. This was the one time that I actually left the shell to continuously let it capture. I will next time however wrap it with something to stop this from happening, or simply use the functions within the program itself: -c Exit after receiving count packets. Steve