How To Install tcpflow on Ubuntu 18.04
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install tcpflow on Ubuntu 18.04.
What is tcpflow
tcpflow is:
tcpflow is a program that captures data transmitted as part of TCP connections (flows), and stores the data in a way that is convenient for protocol analysis or debugging. A program like ’tcpdump’ shows a summary of packets seen on the wire, but usually doesn’t store the data that’s actually being transmitted. In contrast, tcpflow reconstructs the actual data streams and stores each flow in a separate file for later analysis.
tcpflow understands sequence numbers and will correctly reconstruct data streams regardless of retransmissions or out-of-order delivery. However, it currently does not understand IP fragments; flows containing IP fragments will not be recorded properly.
tcpflow is based on the LBL Packet Capture Library and therefore supports the same rich filtering expressions that programs like ’tcpdump’ support. tcpflow can also rebuild flows from data captured with ’tcpdump -w'.
There are three methods to install tcpflow on Ubuntu 18.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install tcpflow Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install tcpflow using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install tcpflow
Install tcpflow Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install tcpflow using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install tcpflow
Install tcpflow Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install tcpflow using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install tcpflow
How To Uninstall tcpflow on Ubuntu 18.04
To uninstall only the tcpflow package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove tcpflow
Uninstall tcpflow And Its Dependencies
To uninstall tcpflow and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 18.04, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove tcpflow
Remove tcpflow Configurations and Data
To remove tcpflow configuration and data from Ubuntu 18.04 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge tcpflow
Remove tcpflow configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove tcpflow configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge tcpflow
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install tcpflow package on Ubuntu 18.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
