User Guide for 1.2.15

There are the man pages, e.g. man wireshark, the html version of the man page, /usr/share/wireshark/wireshark.html and the text help files in /usr/share/wireshark/help.

Note that this info was extracted from looking at the contents of the wireshark 1.2.15 rpms for Centos 6 found at rpm.pbone.net

Not from the Wireshark Web site. See if there are RPMs for CentOS 6 that include Wireshark documentation, and, if there are, see if any of them include the user manual. If not, you'd have to build it from source yourself.

The CentOS RPM packages don't contain the User Guide (PDF file). Unfortunately, you cannot even build that PDF yourself for 1.2.x, as the docbook directory (contains the files to create the User Guide) is empty in the source code tar packages up until 1.4.0. I don't know how the User Guide has been created before 1.4.0 !?! Maybe it was just not part of the source code tar package.

So, here are your options:

• Best solution:: Checkout the sources from the SVN, instead of using the tar files and build the docs from the code:
  1.) svn co http://anonsvn.wireshark.org/wireshark/trunk-1.2/ wireshark-1.2
  2.) cd wireshark-1.2/docbook
  3.) read README.txt
  4.) build the User Guide according to the instructions in README.txt
  
• 2nd best solution:: google it: https://www.google.com/?q=+Wireshark+User+Guide+%22for+Wireshark+1.2%22#q=filetype%3Apdf+Wireshark+User+Guide+%22for+Wireshark+1.2%22 (2nd link)
• 3rd best solution: Download the Windows portable Version of Wireshark 1.2.15. You'll find the User Guide as a CHM file in the package (WiresharkPortable\1.2.15\App\Wireshark\user-guide.chm): http://wireshark.askapache.com/download/win32/all-versions/WiresharkPortable-1.2.15.paf.exe . Then use a (online) CHM to PDF converter to get a PDF file, like this one: http://www.zamzar.com/convert/chm-to-pdf/ . It's not perfect, but the best you can get if you need the User Guide for 1.2.x, without building it yourself (see above).
• Upgrade your CentOS to 6.4 or later. You will then have Wireshark 1.8.x. There is still no User Guide PDF in the RPM package, but you will be able to build it yourself from source now (the docbook directory contains what you need)
• Use the User Guide of 1.4.0 (you'll have to build it from source). The difference to 1.2.x should be 'acceptable'
• Don't use the User Guide at all ;-)

Regards
Kurt