Assistance viewing tcptrace output graphs using xplot

Question

I am using tcptrace to get connection statistics from a tcpdump file.

tcpdump -i any -nn -S -e -s 1514 -v port 4343 -w sink.cap
tcptrace -G sink.cap > tcptrace.txt

Tcptrace generates graphs in .xpl format. I am having trouble in viewing these graphs using xplot. When I run

xplot a2b_tput.xpl
xplot a2b_tsg.xpl

it throws me the following error messages.

• xplot: invalid data for 2-dim stream
• xplot: empty datastream

dsriram@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ tcpdump --version; tcptrace -version; xplot -v
tcpdump version 4.0.0
libpcap version 1.0.0

Version: Ostermann's tcptrace -- version 6.6.7 -- Thu Nov 4, 2004
Compiled by 'buildd' at 'Sat Nov 7 22:53:46 UTC 2009' on machine 'rothera'

X Datafile Plotter V1.19
Copyright (c) ICCE / Karel Kubat 1995. All rights reserved.
Another MegaHard production!

1. I am wondering whether there are any compatibility issues.
2. Am I missing some arguments in tcptrace/tcpdump/xplot commands to get a viewable graph?
3. Are there any other tools available to view.xpl files?

Answer 1

Check that your xplot files contain valid data (they are basically text files with a sequence of plotting commands). Also try using jplot and see if your plots will load with that.

If you are able to post a link to your .cap file I will happy to take a look

Answer 2

Had the same problem, turns out there are many xplot implementations. You should use the xplot.org distribution and it works fine. (Or you may use jPlot too of course)

Answer 3

The program you want is xplot.org, not xplot. More confusing, the package name of the desired program is xplot-xplot.org.

xplot package that you mentioned has nothing to do with tcptrace output graphs (.xpl).

I myself had the same confusion when starting with TCP graphs :).