LOG2PCAP(1)

✨ log2pcap — the log2pcap(1) manual page, bestie edition ✨

okay so picture this: you've got a samba log file just sitting there, full of packet dumps, and you're like "girl… I wish I could actually sniff this." bestie. you can. it's called log2pcap and it's literally the moment. 💅

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🦋 NAME 🦋

log2pcap — Extract network traces from Samba log files

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

log2pcap [-h] [-q] [logfile] [pcap_file]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This tool is part of the samba(7) suite. periodt.

log2pcap reads in a samba log file and generates a pcap file (readable by most sniffers, such as ethereal or tcpdump) based on the packet dumps in the log file. it's giving "glow up for your logs." ✨

The log file must have a log level of at least 5 to get the SMB header/parameters right, 10 to get the first 512 data bytes of the packet and 50 to get the whole packet. no cap — that's literally the requirement.

🫶 low log level = missing data, and she will tell you about it (unless you pass -q, more on that below).

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -h — If this parameter is specified the output file will be a hex dump, in a format that is readable by the text2pcap utility. yes bestie, -h is not help here, she's doing something else entirely. stay woke. 👑
• -q — Be quiet. No warning messages about missing or incomplete data will be given. she's on mute mode, no notes. 🤫
• logfile — Samba log file. log2pcap will try to read the log from stdin if the log file is not specified.
• pcap_file — Name of the output file to write the pcap (or hexdump) data to. If this argument is not specified, output data will be written to stdout.
• -?|--help — Print a summary of command line options. the actual help. iconic. 🌈

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Extract all network traffic from all samba log files:

                     $ log2pcap < /var/log/* > trace.pcap

Convert to pcap using text2pcap:

           $ log2pcap -h samba.log | text2pcap -T 139,139 - trace.pcap

✨ look at those pipes. chef's kiss. that second one is literally the collab of the century.

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🌈 VERSION 🌈

This man page is part of version 4.24.7 of the Samba suite.

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💀 BUGS 💀

• Only SMB data is extracted from the samba logs, no LDAP, NetBIOS lookup or other data. she's picky like that. 🙈
• The generated TCP and IP headers don't contain a valid checksum. yeah bestie, that part's not giving what it's supposed to give. noted. 📝

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🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

text2pcap(1), ethereal(1)

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.

This manpage was written by Jelmer Vernooij.

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that's the whole page, bestie, no crumbs left behind. 🍓 this lil' gem came to you straight from Samba 4.24.7, dated 09/09/2026 — screenshot it, save it, send it to the group chat. mwah. 💖