NGREP(8)

💅 ngrep(8) — network grep, but make it packets

Okay bestie, buckle up, because ngrep is the manual page we're reading and it's genuinely iconic. It's the "network grep" and it's about to be your new main character.

---

✨ NAME ✨

ngrep — network grep 🕸️🔍

---

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

ngrep <-hNXViwqpevxlDtTRMCu> <-IO pcap_dump > < -n num > < -d dev > < -A
num > < -s snaplen > < -S limitlen > < -W normal|byline|single|none > <
-c cols > < -P char > < -F file > < match expression > < bpf filter >

---

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So here's the vibe: ngrep is literally trying to give you most of GNU grep's common features, except applied to the network layer instead of files. Obsessed. 🫶

It's a pcap-aware tool, meaning it lets you specify extended regular expressions to match against the data payloads of packets. No cap.

Right now it recognizes TCP, UDP and ICMP across Ethernet, PPP, SLIP, FDDI and null interfaces — and it understands bpf filter logic in the exact same fashion as the more common packet sniffing tools, like tcpdump(8) and snoop(1). It's giving "I studied abroad with tcpdump." 🌍✨

---

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

• -h — Display help/usage information. The "help me help you" button 💖
• -N — Show the sub-protocol number along with the single-character identifier. Super useful when you're observing raw or unknown protocols 👀
• -X — Treat the match expression as a hexadecimal string. See the explanation of match expression below (iykyk).
• -V — Display version information. Gotta know which era of ngrep you're in ⭐
• -i — Ignore case for the regex expression. Case sensitivity? Never heard of her 💅
• -w — Match the regex expression as a word.
• -q — Be quiet; don't output any information other than packet headers and their payloads (if relevant). Lowkey mode activated 🤫
• -p — Don't put the interface into promiscuous mode.
• -e — Show empty packets. Normally empty packets are discarded because they have no payload to search. If specified, empty packets will be shown, regardless of the specified regex expression. Nothing gets left out 😭
• -v — Invert the match; only display packets that don't match. The contrarian icon 🌈
• -x — Dump packet contents as both hexadecimal and ASCII.
• -l — Make stdout line buffered.
• -C — Colorize matches in packet contents output. Yes bestie, we're aesthetic even in the terminal 🎨✨
• -u — Display UTF-8 characters in packet contents output.
• -D — When reading pcap_dump files, replay them at their recorded time intervals (mimic realtime). It's giving time travel 🕰️
• -t — Print a timestamp in the form of YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS.UUUUUU everytime a packet is matched.
• -T — Print a timestamp in the form of +S.UUUUUU, indicating the delta between packet matches. Specify a second time to indicate the delta since the first packet match. ⏱️
• -R — Do not try to drop privileges to the DROPPRIVS_USER (specified at build-time).

Okay so this one needs a whole moment, because it's highkey dangerous and we're not sugarcoating it 🚨. ngrep makes no effort to validate input from live or offline sources, since it's focused more on performance and handling large amounts of data than protocol correctness — which is most often a fair assumption to make. However, sometimes it matters, and thus as a rule ngrep will try to be defensive and drop any root privileges it might have.

There exist scenarios where this behaviour can become an obstacle, so this option is provided to end-users who want to disable this feature — but must do so with an understanding of the risks. Packets can be randomly malformed or even specifically designed to overflow sniffers and take control of them, and revoking root privileges is currently the only risk mitigation ngrep employs against such an attack.

Use this option and turn it off at your own risk. Fr fr. 💀

• -c cols — Explicitly set the console width to cols. Note that this is the console width, and not the full width of what ngrep prints out as payloads; depending on the output mode ngrep may print less than cols bytes per line (indentation). Math is hard, we get it 🧮
• -F file — Read in the bpf filter from the specified filename. This is a compatibility option for users familiar with tcpdump. Please note that specifying -F will override any bpf filter specified on the command-line. Sorry, command-line filter, you've been replaced 🙈
• -P char — Specify an alternate character to signify non-printable characters when displayed. The default is . 🎀
• -K num — Kill matching TCP connections (like tcpkill). The numeric argument controls how many RST segments are sent. Very main character energy, honestly 👑
• -W normal|byline|single|none — Specify an alternate manner for displaying packets, when not in hexadecimal mode.
  • byline mode honors embedded linefeeds, wrapping text only when a linefeed is encountered (useful for observing HTTP transactions, for instance).
  • none mode doesn't wrap under any circumstance (entire payload is displayed on one line).
  • single mode is conceptually the same as none, except that everything including IP and source/destination header information is all on one line.
  • normal is the default mode and is only included for completeness.
  • > Heads up: this option is incompatible with -x. Pick a lane bestie 😤
• -s snaplen — Set the bpf caplen to snaplen (default 65536).
• -S limitlen — Set the upper limit on the size of packets that ngrep will look at. Useful for looking at only the first N bytes of packets without changing the BPF snaplen. Sneaky and efficient 🐝
• -I pcap_dump — Input file pcap_dump into ngrep. Works with any pcap-compatible dump file format. This option is useful for searching for a wide range of different patterns over the same packet stream. Reusable content, we love to see it 💜
• -O pcap_dump — Output matched packets to a pcap-compatible dump file. This feature does not interfere with normal output to stdout. Two things at once, multitasking queen ✨
• -n num — Match only num packets total, then exit. Boundaries! We respect them 🛑
• -d dev — By default ngrep will select a default interface to listen on. Use this option to force ngrep to listen on interface dev.
• -A num — Dump num packets of trailing context after matching a packet. The entourage of packets that follows the star 💫
• -r — Resolve container IP addresses to their Docker or Podman container names. When enabled, IP addresses are displayed as container_name(ip_address) in packet output. If the Docker or Podman socket is accessible, ngrep uses the Events API for real-time container tracking. Otherwise, it falls back to CLI-based polling with a 30-second cache TTL. This feature can be excluded at build time with --disable-container-resolution. Docker girlies rise 🐳💖

---

(part 1 done, and no we're not done — keep reading, bestie)

🌈 MATCH AND FILTER EXPRESSIONS 🌈

🎀 match expression 🎀

A match expression is either an extended regular expression, or — if you pass the -X option — a string that says a hexadecimal value. An extended regular expression follows the rules as implemented by the GNU regex library. Hexadecimal expressions can optionally be preceded by 0x. E.g., DEADBEEF, 0xDEADBEEF. Periodt, bestie 🫶

🦋 bpf filter 🦋

This selects a filter that says what packets will be dumped. If no bpf filter is given, all IP packets seen on the selected interface will be dumped. Otherwise, only packets for which bpf filter is true will be dumped. Iconic behavior, honestly ✨

The bpf filter consists of one or more primitives. Primitives usually consist of an id (name or number) preceded by one or more qualifiers. There are three different kinds of qualifier:

• type — these say what kind of thing the id name or number refers to. Possible types are host, net and port. E.g., host blort, net 1.2.3, port 80. If there is no type qualifier, host is assumed.
• dir — these specify a particular transfer direction to and/or from id. Possible directions are src, dst, src or dst and src and dst. E.g., src foo, dst net 1.2.3, src or dst port ftp-data. If there is no dir qualifier, src or dst is assumed. For null link layers (i.e. point to point protocols such as slip) the inbound and outbound qualifiers can be used to specify a desired direction.
• proto — these are restricted to ip-only protocols. Possible protos are: tcp , udp and icmp. e.g., udp src foo or tcp port 21. If there is no proto qualifier, all protocols consistent with the type are assumed. E.g., src foo means ip and ((tcp or udp) src foo), net bar means ip and (net bar), and port 53 means ip and ((tcp or udp) port 53).

In addition to the above, there are some special primitive keywords that don’t follow the pattern: gateway, broadcast, less, greater and arithmetic expressions. All of these are described below. No cap 💅

More complex filter expressions are built up by using the words and, or and not to combine primitives. E.g., host blort and not port ftp and not port ftp-data. To save typing, identical qualifier lists can be omitted. E.g., tcp dst port ftp or ftp-data or domain is exactly the same as tcp dst port ftp or tcp dst port ftp-data or tcp dst port domain.

Allowable primitives are:

• dst host host — true if the IP destination field of the packet is host, which may be either an address or a name.
• src host host — true if the IP source field of the packet is host.
• host host — true if either the IP source or destination of the packet is host. Any of the above host expressions can be prepended with the keywords, ip, arp, or rarp as in:

ip host host

which is equivalent to: (and bestie, the page literally leaves that colon hanging with no expression after it 😭).

• ether dst ehost — true if the ethernet destination address is ehost. Ehost may be either a name from /etc/ethers or a number (see ethers(3N) for numeric format).
• ether src ehost — true if the ethernet source address is ehost.
• ether host ehost — true if either the ethernet source or destination address is ehost.
• gateway host — true if the packet used host as a gateway. I.e., the ethernet source or destination address was host but neither the IP source nor the IP destination was host. Host must be a name and must be found in both /etc/hosts and /etc/ethers. (An equivalent expression is

ether host ehost and not host host

which can be used with either names or numbers for host / ehost.)

• dst net net — true if the IP destination address of the packet has a network number of net. Net may be either a name from /etc/networks or a network number (see networks(4) for details).
• src net net — true if the IP source address of the packet has a network number of net.
• net net — true if either the IP source or destination address of the packet has a network number of net.
• net net mask mask — true if the IP address matches net with the specific netmask. May be qualified with src or dst.
• net net/len — true if the IP address matches net a netmask len bits wide. May be qualified with src or dst.
• dst port port — true if the packet is ip/tcp or ip/udp and has a destination port value of port. The port can be a number or a name used in /etc/services (see tcp(4P) and udp(4P)). If a name is used, both the port number and protocol are checked. If a number or ambiguous name is used, only the port number is checked (e.g., dst port 513 will print both tcp/login traffic and udp/who traffic, and port domain will print both tcp/domain and udp/domain traffic).
• src port port — true if the packet has a source port value of port.
• port port — true if either the source or destination port of the packet is port. Any of the above port expressions can be prepended with the keywords, tcp or udp, as in:

tcp src port port

which matches only tcp packets whose source port is port.

• less length — true if the packet has a length less than or equal to length. This is equivalent to:

len <= length

• greater length — true if the packet has a length greater than or equal to length. This is equivalent to:

len >= length

• ip proto protocol — true if the packet is an ip packet (see ip(4P)) of protocol type protocol. Protocol can be a number or one of the names tcp, udp or icmp. Note that the identifiers tcp and udp are also keywords and must be escaped via backslash (\), which is \\ in the C-shell.
• ip broadcast — true if the packet is an IP broadcast packet. It checks for both the all-zeroes and all-ones broadcast conventions, and looks up the local subnet mask.
• ip multicast — true if the packet is an IP multicast packet.
• ip — abbreviation for:

ether proto ip

• tcp, udp, icmp — abbreviations for:

ip proto p

where p is one of the above protocols.

• expr relop expr — true if the relation holds, where relop is one of >, <, >=, <=, =, !=, and expr is an arithmetic expression composed of integer constants (expressed in standard C syntax), the normal binary operators [+, -, *, /, &, |], a length operator, and special packet data accessors. To access data inside the packet, use the following syntax:

proto [ expr : size ]

Proto is one of ip, tcp, udp or icmp, and indicates the protocol layer for the index operation. The byte offset, relative to the indicated protocol layer, is given by expr. Size is optional and indicates the number of bytes in the field of interest; it can be either one, two, or four, and defaults to one. The length operator, indicated by the keyword len, gives the length of the packet.

For example, ether[0] & 1 != 0 catches all multicast traffic. The expression ip[0] & 0xf != 5 catches all IP packets with options. The expression ip[6:2] & 0x1fff = 0 catches only unfragmented datagrams and frag zero of fragmented datagrams. This check is implicitly applied to the tcp and udp index operations. For instance, tcp[0] always means the first byte of the TCP header, and never means the first byte of an intervening fragment.

Primitives may be combined using:

• A parenthesized group of primitives and operators (parentheses are special to the Shell and must be escaped).
• Negation (! or not).
• Concatenation (&& or and).
• Alternation (|| or or).

Negation has highest precedence. Alternation and concatenation have equal precedence and associate left to right. Note that explicit and tokens, not juxtaposition, are now required for concatenation. Lowkey important, bestie 👀

If an identifier is given without a keyword, the most recent keyword is assumed. For example,

not host vs and ace

is short for

not host vs and host ace

which should not be confused with

not ( host vs or ace )

Expression arguments can be passed to ngrep as either a single argument or as multiple arguments, whichever is more convenient. Generally, if the expression contains Shell metacharacters, it is easier to pass it as a single, quoted argument. Multiple arguments are concatenated with spaces before being parsed. Slay 🫶

---

💀 DIAGNOSTICS 💀

Errors from ngrep, libpcap, and the GNU regex library are all output to stderr.

🚦 EXIT STATUS 🚦

The ngrep utility exits with one of the following values:

• 0 — one or more frames were matched.
• 1 — no frames were matched.
• 2 — an error occurred.
• 3+ — Hell is freezing over, run!

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by Jordan Ritter <jpr5@darkridge.com>.

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

Please report bugs to the ngrep’s GitHub Issue Tracker, located at

http://github.com/jpr5/ngrep/issues

Non-bug, non-feature-request general feedback should be sent to the author directly by email.

📝 NOTES 📝

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

okay that’s the whole vibe, bestie 🫶 big kisses from *nux 💖 — February 2026 — NGREP(8) ✨