Re: ncat - UNIX-domain sockets support

[Tomas Hozza <thozza () redhat com>]

This solution has been discussed too. But there are some issues
with cross-version compatibility. I'm not very familiar with details,
I was just asked to implement UNIX-domain sockets functionality.

You can find whole discussion about this issue on Fedora devel-list:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-July/169995.html

Hope it answers some of your questions.

Regards,
Tomas

----- Original Message -----
> socat supports UNIX socats, perhaps it can be used instead of nc or
> ncat.
>
> On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 9:19 PM, Tomas Hozza <thozza () redhat com>
> wrote:
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > > Thanks for your efforts.  Does RedHat have a customer who needs
> > > this
> > > support or have you seen some other sign of demand?  Before we
> > > commit
> > > to supporting a new (to Ncat/Nsock) interface, I want to be sure
> > > folks
> > > will actually use it.  We shouldn't add it just because original
> > > nc
> > > supported it back in 1996.  The networking landscape was a lot
> > > different back then.
> >
> > Hi Fyodor.
> >
> > We are replacing the "old OpenBSD nc" in Fedora with nmap ncat. My
> > motivation for implementing UNIX-domain sockets is mainly the
> > compatibility with the "old nc" because of some use with libvirt.
> >
> > Here is a part of post on Fedora devel-list from Daniel P.
> > Berrange:
> > > The NMap 'ncat' program doesn't support connecting to UNIX domain
> > > sockets.
> > > This functionality is *critical* for libvirt to connect to remote
> > > servers via our SSH tunnel facility. You've now broken the ability
> > > to connect to rawhide virt hosts :-(
> > >
> > >    $ virsh -c qemu+ssh://root () avocado XXXXX com/system
> > >    error: End of file while reading data: 2012-07-19
> > >    10:49:00.415+0000:
> > > 10202: info : libvirt version: 0.9.13, package: 1.fc17 (Unknown,
> > > 2012-07-02-12:05:10, t500wlan.home.berrange.com)
> > >    nc: invalid option -- 'U'
> > >    Ncat: Try `--help' or man(1) ncat for more information, usage
> > >    options
> > > and help. QUITTING.: Input/output error
> > >    error: failed to connect to the hypervisor
> > >
> > > Libvirt needs to be able to run the following command
> > >
> > >    # nc -U /var/run/libvirt/libvirt-sock
> >
> > I asked Daniel to write on nmap devel-list to describe their usage
> > scenarios more, because I personally don't work with libvirt and
> > therefore
> > can't explain the need for UNIX sockets functionality.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Tomas
> > _______________________________________________
> > Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list
> > http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev
> > Archived at http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/
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