Re: [nmap-svn] r21603 - nmap/todo

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2011 at 06:11:52PM -0800, commit-mailer () insecure org wrote:
> Author: fyodor
> Date: Tue Jan  4 18:11:52 2011
> New Revision: 21603
>
> Log:
> Add a task to remove some NSE verbosity
>
> Modified:
>    nmap/todo/nmap.txt
>
> Modified: nmap/todo/nmap.txt
> ==============================================================================
> --- nmap/todo/nmap.txt        (original)
> +++ nmap/todo/nmap.txt        Tue Jan  4 18:11:52 2011
> @@ -14,6 +14,28 @@
>  
>  o Make new SecTools.Org site with the 2010 survey results.
>  
> +o A trivial change: we currently print some lines about NSE
> +  pre-scanning and post-scanning in verbose mode even when no such
> +  scripts are being run.  We should not print those in that case.  For
> +  example, nmap -A -v scanme.nmap.org gives me these superfluous lines:
> +  NSE: Starting runlevel 1 (of 2) scan.
> +  Initiating NSE at 18:09
> +  NSE: Script Pre-scanning.
> +  Completed NSE at 18:09, 0.00s elapsed
> +  NSE: Starting runlevel 2 (of 2) scan.
> +  Initiating NSE at 18:09
> +  NSE: Script Pre-scanning.
> +  Completed NSE at 18:09, 0.00s elapsed
> +  [...]
> +  NSE: Starting runlevel 1 (of 2) scan.
> +  Initiating NSE at 18:09
> +  NSE: Script Post-scanning.
> +  Completed NSE at 18:09, 0.00s elapsed
> +  NSE: Starting runlevel 2 (of 2) scan.
> +  Initiating NSE at 18:09
> +  NSE: Script Post-scanning.
> +  Completed NSE at 18:09, 0.00s elapsed

I removed the messages

Initiating NSE at 18:09
Completed NSE at 18:09, 0.00s elapsed

when there are no scripts to be run. The others are more difficult,
because when we enter a run level we don't yet know how many scripts
will be run. It used to be the case that we loaded all the script
instances in advance, but we now load them on demand in chunks to bound
memory use. http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2010/q4/308.

It confuses the control flow somewhat, but I'm thinking about buffering
these messages and only showing them once the first script will be run.
That can have the weird side effect that some runlevels may be announced
when others aren't, for example:

NSE: Starting runlevel 1 (of 4) scan.
NSE: Starting runlevel 2 (of 4) scan.

David Fifield
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