When enabled, the tool captures its own system calls. It watches itself watching the wire. The capture file becomes a Möbius strip: packets about packets about attention.
The manual’s final line reads: “The network is not a machine. The network is a medium. And you are the noise, the signal, and the filter. Exit with ‘:q!’ only if you are willing to forget what you have seen.” Thus pktool v2.0 — not a tool for packets, but a lens for the self that watches packets. Upgrade carefully.
If you answer no, it prints:
So came pktool v1.0 : the first pair of eyes pressed against the wire. It could parse, filter, print — a stethoscope for the digital circulatory system. It was good. But it was literal .
Where v1.0 asked “What is in the packet?” v2.0 asks *“What is the packet in ?” pktool v2.0
Sample output (abridged):
I. Invocation
It does not show you packets. It shows you the shape of your attention .
When invoked with pktool v2.0 analyze --depth 2 --mode existential , the tool stops filtering for you and begins filtering through you. When enabled, the tool captures its own system calls