*BSD News Article 96832


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From: Larry Todd <ltodd@bbnplanet.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: tcpdump - packet length errors
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 17:59:35 -0400
Organization: BBN Planet
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When I run tcpdump (ver 2.4 I think) on an ethernet interface on a
system running BSDI 2.1, I quite often get kernel errors indicating "bad
input packet length" with a very small packet length displayed (in the
range of 9 to 14 bytes).  When these errors occur, they stream
constantly until such time as I kill the tcpdump process.

Is this a known problem?  Is there a fix?  Is more system specific
information required to isolate the problem?

Larry T. Todd
BBN Corporation
Internet Support Engineer
150 Cambridge Park Drive
Cambridge, MA. 02140
email: ltodd@bbnplanet.com