Re: Feedback on Ncat documentation

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 06:58:48PM -0500, stripes wrote:
> I'll go ahead and update the documentation if this is ok. I don't have
> it downloaded via CVS but I can download the HTML and do an unified
> diff for a patch if that's acceptable. I'll test the examples next.

Sorry for the delay in responding to this. Any kind of documentation
help is most welcome and I don't want to give the impression that it's
not appreciated.

The DocBook source for the documentation isn't in a public repository. A
diff against the HTML is going to be very hard to work with, because
DocBook generates arbitrary element IDs that seems to change with every
build. If you could just send your suggested changes as text that would
be the most helpful.

> Comments:
> http://nmap.org/ncat/guide/index.html
>
> Nothing on the history of Netcat? Wasn't it originally written in 1991
> by Matt (can't remember his last name). What about the GNU Netcat
> project? How is this different? You mention other versions of Netcat,
> but it would be fair to give them a little more history given the
> popularity of it.
>
> What about UDP and TCP? Can it do both? ICMP? It says there's SSL
> support. How is this different than cryptcat? 

Fyodor expanded the introduction and I think all this is covered now.

> http://nmap.org/ncat/guide/ncat-usage.html
>
> Good, but there are other servers to emulate in addition to a web server?

It says: "For more information on making a server that continually
responds to requests, see the examples in the section called “Emulating
Diagnostic Services'." I don't want to get more technical in the "Basic
Usage" section.

> http://nmap.org/ncat/guide/ncat-advanced.html
>
> The SSL example is good, but it helps to show other ports besides the
> standard web ports.

Thanks. I added an example of connecting to the Ncat SSL server with an
Ncat SSL client.

> http://nmap.org/ncat/guide/ncat-access.html
>
> For the access, this is similiar to TCP wrapper functionality, right?

I don't know much about TCP Wrapper, but I think the concept is the
same.

> http://nmap.org/ncat/guide/ncat-other-options.html
>
> With the telnet option, can you also tell netcat to act as a telnet
> server, or just in client mode only?

Thanks for noticing that. --telnet works in listen mode too and I added
a note to that effect.

> http://nmap.org/ncat/guide/ncat-tricks.html
>
> I would move the version detection to its own section.

Really? That section is pretty short, and it's just something
interesting, not a fundamental capability of Ncat.

> What about a shell shoveling example? That's always fun :)

Can you give an example of what you'd like to see?

Thanks again for your feedback. That was a thorough writeup.

David Fifield

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