xref: /freebsd-src/contrib/libpcap/doc/README.macos (revision 57e22627f9459b9dfd6043b32e02ecfcf205e176)

As with other systems using BPF, macOS allows users with read access to
the BPF devices to capture packets with libpcap and allows users with
write access to the BPF devices to send packets with libpcap.

On some systems that use BPF, the BPF devices live on the root file
system, and the permissions and/or ownership on those devices can be
changed to give users other than root permission to read or write those
devices.

On newer versions of FreeBSD, the BPF devices live on devfs, and devfs
can be configured to set the permissions and/or ownership of those
devices to give users other than root permission to read or write those
devices.

On macOS, the BPF devices live on devfs, but the macOS version of devfs
is based on an older (non-default) FreeBSD devfs, and that version of
devfs cannot be configured to set the permissions and/or ownership of
those devices.

Therefore, we supply:

	a "startup item" for older versions of macOS;

	a launchd daemon for Tiger and later versions of macOS;

Both of them will change the ownership of the BPF devices so that the
"admin" group owns them, and will change the permission of the BPF
devices to rw-rw----, so that all users in the "admin" group - i.e., all
users with "Allow user to administer this computer" turned on - have
both read and write access to them.

The startup item is in the ChmodBPF directory in the source tree.  A
/Library/StartupItems directory should be created if it doesn't already
exist, and the ChmodBPF directory should be copied to the
/Library/StartupItems directory (copy the entire directory, so that
there's a /Library/StartupItems/ChmodBPF directory, containing all the
files in the source tree's ChmodBPF directory; don't copy the individual
items in that directory to /Library/StartupItems).  The ChmodBPF
directory, and all files under it, must be owned by root.  Installing
the files won't immediately cause the startup item to be executed; it
will be executed on the next reboot.  To change the permissions before
the reboot, run

	sudo SystemStarter start ChmodBPF

The launchd daemon is the chmod_bpf script, plus the
org.tcpdump.chmod_bpf.plist launchd plist file.  chmod_bpf should be
installed in /usr/local/bin/chmod_bpf, and org.tcpdump.chmod_bpf.plist
should be installed in /Library/LaunchDaemons.  chmod_bpf, and
org.tcpdump.chmod_bpf.plist, must be owned by root.  Installing the
script and plist file won't immediately cause the script to be executed;
it will be executed on the next reboot.  To change the permissions
before the reboot, run

	sudo /usr/local/bin/chmod_bpf

or

	sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.tcpdump.chmod_bpf.plist

If you want to give a particular user permission to access the BPF
devices, rather than giving all administrative users permission to
access them, you can have the ChmodBPF/ChmodBPF script change the
ownership of /dev/bpf* without changing the permissions.  If you want to
give a particular user permission to read and write the BPF devices and
give the administrative users permission to read but not write the BPF
devices, you can have the script change the owner to that user, the
group to "admin", and the permissions to rw-r-----.  Other possibilities
are left as an exercise for the reader.

(NOTE: due to a bug in Snow Leopard, if you change the permissions not
to grant write permission to everybody who should be allowed to capture
traffic, non-root users who cannot open the BPF devices for writing will
not be able to capture outgoing packets.)