A sample of netpack in Debian sarge

For those who cannot wait for an official package of Debian, here goes a nice how-to suited for guys with some experience on Linux.
Requirement: libpcap0.7; your Kernel support (CONFIG_PACKET, for Kernels >= 2.2, according green report below; or attached an interface in promiscuous mode on Kernel < 2.2).

frog:~# grep CONFIG_PACKET=[my] /boot/config-2.6.8-2-386 ; [ $? = 0 ] && echo "Kernel `uname -a`: Supports pcap"
CONFIG_PACKET=m
Kernel Linux frog 2.6.8-2-386 #1 Thu May 19 17:40:50 JST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux: Supports pcap

Check the installed libpcap0.7:

frog:~# dpkg -l | grep pcap
ii libpcap0.7 0.7.2-7 System interface for user-level packet captu
ii libpcap0.7-dev 0.7.2-7 Development library and header files for lib
ii libpcap0.8 0.9.5-1 System interface for user-level packet captu
frog:~# ldconfig -p | grep pcap
libpcap.so.0.8 (libc6) => /usr/lib/libpcap.so.0.8
libpcap.so.0.7 (libc6) => /usr/lib/libpcap.so.0.7
frog:~# file ~guest/gpackcount_static
/home/guest/gpackcount_static: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, stripped

For compiling netpack package by your own you will need libpcap0.7-dev, but if you download a binary package of netpack you will not need this.
Supose your Debian box is connecting a share in a windowzed host, via Samba-client.

frog:~# mount -t smbfs
//luisa/huge on /net/luisa/huge type smbfs (rw)

This indicates a share called huge is mounted locally at /net/luisa/huge. You can sniff the raw-text transfer protocol (NetBIOS, in particular microsoft-ds) using the following command:

~guest/gpackcount_static packets -g 445,0,0,445 -v

In my case the windowzed PC has a replica of my Freesco-box (moreira.dnsalias.org/linux), and I synch information regularly from the Freesco-box to this PC using a Debian guest (named frog). I use rsync (that is actually also installed at the Freesco-box, though this is only a nice-to-have: it improves even more the transfer speed) -- rsync is the Rolls Royce of a synchronization tool. It also allows compressed file-transfer (using '-z'). In the following example you can see a folder named 'linux' transferred to the PC using the Samba share.

frog:~# grep smbfs /etc/fstab
//luisa/huge /net/luisa/huge smbfs rw,noauto,username=henrique,password=your_windowzed_pass 0 0
frog:~# mount /net/luisa/huge
frog:~# cd /net/luisa/huge/pub/public_html/org/linux
frog:/net/luisa/huge/pub/public_html/org/linux# rsync -v -v -t -r --stats root@maxtor:/www/org/linux . 2> /tmp/rep

The bold line is the customized Samba client I have configured on the Debian host.
Be sure to have the 'smbfs' package installed, otherwise the mount command will fail (apt-get install smbfs).

Note: I am currently a little bit skeptic about the 'lfs' option on the Samba client.

The rsync command is shown above.

The gpackcount will show the file-transfer contents, excluding the mounting.