Installing Netcat (nc) Process Monitoring Tool in Linux
To install the Netcat tool use the following commands as per your Linux distribution.
In the case of Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install netcat
In the case of CentOS/RHEL
sudo yum install nc
In the case of Fedora 22+ and RHEL 8,9
sudo dnf install nc
NOTE: To verify that it is successfully installed in our system, we run the following command “nc -h”. This will display the help menu of Netcat, indicating that it is installed and ready to be used.
Practical Uses of nc(netcat) command in Linux
Netcat is one of the most powerful networking tools, security tools, and network monitoring tools. It acts like a cat command over a network. It is even considered a Swiss army knife of networking tools. It is generally used for the following reasons:
- Operation related to TCP, UDP, or UNIX-domain sockets.
- Port Scanning
- Port Listening
- Port redirection
- open Remote connections
- Read/Write data across the network.
- Network debugging
- Network daemon testing
- Simple TCP proxies
- A Socks or HTTP Proxy Command for ssh
It is designed by keeping in mind that it should be a flexible “back-end” tool that can be used directly or driven by any other program.