What's the easiest way to sniff TCP traffic data on Linux?

Update:

As pointed by Michal in the comments: From tcpflow version 1.3 the -e option is used for specifying the scanner name. So the error "Invalid scanner name '8983'" is printed. The correct command is

sudo tcpflow -i any -C -J port 1234

(also -J has been changed to -g in the latest release)

---

Thanks to yves for pointing me to "tcpflow". Here's the commmand-line:

tcpflow -i any -C -e port 1234  # as root, or with sudo

This does everything I want

• displays the data byte-for-byte as it comes in
• doesn't display any other metadata
• listens on all interfaces (so it captures data coming from within the machine and outside)

The "-C" tells it to dump to the console instead of a file. The "-e" enables colors so client->server and server->client are visually distinct.

I installed tcpflow by simply doing

sudo apt-get install tcpflow

socat is the tool you are asking for. It can act as a proxy:

$socat -v TCP-LISTEN:4444 TCP:localhost:1234
hello

then your application must connect port 4444 instead of directly connect to 1234

-v option is for socat to print out everything it receives on the standard error (stderr).

Update:

If socat is not available on your machine, you may still emulate it that way with netcat:

$netcat -l -p 4444 | tee output_file | netcat localhost 1234

caveats: this option is unidirectional. the second netcat instance will print any reponse from your server to the standard output. You may still do then:

$mkfifo my_fifo
$netcat -l -p 4444 < my_fifo | tee output_file | netcat localhost 1234 > my_fifo

Try Wireshark. It's an excellent protocol analyser targeted for both Linux and Windows.