Run Wireshark as Non-Privileged User in Ubuntu

This has been annoying me for a while, so I researched it. I wrongfully submitted a bug to Launchpad, and finally was directed to an answer.

It was bugging me that there was no simple way to add a gksu wireshark shortcut in Unity. It turns out that that isn’t what you want to do. If you check your file:///usr/share/doc/wireshark-common/README.Debian, you’ll see that there is an extra step to being able to run Wireshark with full functionality as a non-root user. A quick summary:

1. Install Wireshark as you normally would.
2. Run sudo dpkg-reconfigure wireshark-common to enable capturing by non-priveleged users.
3. Run sudo adduser myname wireshark to add yourself to the wireshark group.

That’s it. Obviously, replace myname with your username. You have to log out of your desktop session and log in again before it will work. But it works. :)