How to start Wireshark not as root user on SLES

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 3 (SLES 11 SP3)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 Service Pack 3 (SLED 11 SP3)

Situation

Starting wireshark via Gnome or KDE startmenu always asks for the root password.
If that is not desired, users have to start wireshark from a terminal.

Resolution

There's are more elegant way to do that and afterwards wireshark will start only with user rights. To obtain a live capture it needs to be started from a superuser terminal then (can't have both)!

On SLES/SLED 11:

For a global change, edit as root:

/usr/share/applications/wireshark.desktop

and either remove the whole line, or add a "#" at beginning of the line:

X-KDE-SubstituteUID=true

That change will be undone with each wireshark update, though.

To do this permanently for a user, copy the above wireshark.desktop file to:

$USER/.local/share/applications/

and proceed as above. Then make sure the user logs off and on again.

SLES/SLED12:

Same configuration file, only the necessary changes differ. Edit /usr/share/applications/wireshark.desktop and search for:

Exec=/usr/bin/xdg-su -c /usr/bin/wireshark %f

Change the line to:

Exec=/usr/bin/wireshark %f

Save the file and log off and on again.

Disclaimer

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