ovs-pcap(1)

💖 ovs-pcap — bestie edition 💖

okay so. you found ovs-pcap, which is a little cutie from the Open vSwitch Manual family, section 1 (that's "user commands", iykyk). let's get into it 🌸

✨ NAME ✨

ovs-pcap — print packets from a pcap file as hex 💅

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

ovs-pcap file

Common options:
       [-h | --help] [-V | --version]

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the vibe: ovs-pcap reads the pcap file you named on the command line — that's the file argument, bestie, right there in the synopsis, no cap — and it prints each packet's contents as a sequence of hex digits, one line all to itself. every packet. its own line. main character energy, honestly.

and the way that format is exactly what you want for the ofproto/trace command supported by ovs-vswitchd(8)?? obsessed. it's giving "purpose-built" 🎀

ngl, if you were about to hand-roll some hex-conversion script, don't. this is the program. periodt.

---

⭐ OPTIONS ⭐

• -h, --help — prints a brief help message to the console 💖 super short, super sweet, tells you what's up.
• -V, --version — prints version information to the console ✨ that's it, that's the whole option.

note the common-options bracket situation in the synopsis: [-h | --help] [-V | --version] — these two are optional, the file argument is the one you actually have to bring 🙈

---

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

go be nosy, bestie, these are all worth a peek:

• ovs-vswitchd(8)
• ovs-tcpundump(1)
• tcpdump(8)
• wireshark(8)

---

and that's the whole page, fr fr. this was brought to you by Open vSwitch, version 4.0.0 — yes, four point oh point oh, she's iconic, she's current, she's the whole package. go dump some packets, babe, you got this 🫶💜