stopping a command within a script?

[cab00se]

I'm new to perl, I'm trying to create a script that will capture tcpdump data into a specified file. So far i've been able to run the command just fine, however i don't know how to stop the process after a certain period of time. Say I want to capture 30 seconds of tcpdump data, how do I stop the tcpdump proccess after 30 seconds and continue with the script?

This is the first snippet of code i'm using to capture the data.

system ("/usr/sbin/tcpdump -npti eth0 > m2k.txt")

 

[PaulTEG]

look into the -c flag which you can specify the number of sniffs

alternatively you could fork the process, and subsequently kill the relevant pid

HTH
--Paul

Nancy Griffith - songstress extraordinaire,
and composer of the snipers anthem "From a distance ...