1. Question
When I try to open a pre-recorded packet dump in Wireshark on Ubuntu, the interface freezes, and I encounter errors and warnings related to the packet dump in the terminal where I execute Wireshark. How can I resolve this issue with the packet dump?
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to ‘GObject’
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_set_qdata_full: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to ‘GtkRange’
(wireshark:3480):Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_range_get_adjustment: assertion ‘GTK_IS_RANGE (range)’ failed
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to ‘GtkOrientable’
(wireshark:3480):Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_orientable_get_orientation: assertion ‘GTK_IS_ORIENTABLE (orientable)’ failed
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to ‘GtkScrollbar’
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to ‘GtkWidget’
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to ‘GObject’
(wireshark:3480):GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_get_qdata: assertion ‘G_IS_OBJECT (object)’ failed
(wireshark:3480):Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_set_name: assertion ‘GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)’ failed
Wireshark is a GUI-based packet capture and sniffing tool. The tool is commonly used by network administrators, network security engineers or developers for various tasks where packet-level network analysis is required, such as in network troubleshooting, vulnerability testing, application debugging, or reverse protocol engineering. Wireshark allows real-time recording of packets and browsing their protocol headers and payloads through a convenient graphical user interface.
This is the UI of Wireshark , especially when running under Ubuntu desktop, which sometimes hangs or freezes with the following error when you scroll up or down the packet list view, or start loading a pre-recorded packet dump file.
Apparently, this error is caused by some incompatibility between Wireshark and the overlay scrollbar, which has not yet been resolved in the latest Ubuntu desktops (for example, the desktop of Ubuntu 15.04).
One way to avoid Wireshark UI freezing is to
Temporarily disable overlay scrollbars
There are two ways to disable the overlay scrollbar in Wireshark, depending on how you started Wireshark on your desktop.
2. Command line solution
Overlay scrollbars can be set by setting “
LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR
“Environment variable is set to “0” to disable.
So, if you start Wireshark from the command line in Terminal, you can disable the overlay scrollbar in Wireshark as shown below.
Open your .bashrc file and define the following alias.
alias wireshark=”LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 /usr/bin/wireshark”
4. Desktop startup solution
If you started Wireshark using the desktop launcher, you can edit its desktop launcher file.
$ sudovi/usr/share/applications/wireshark.desktop
Find the line starting with “Exec” and change it as follows.
Exec=env LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=0 wireshark %f
While this workaround will help all desktop users at the system level, it will be useless if it is overwritten after upgrading Wireshark. If you want to keep the modified .desktop file, copy it to your home directory as shown below.
$ cp/usr/share/applications/wireshark.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/
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