Re: [Patch] Output partial results after host timeout

[Chris Woodbury <woodbusy () gmail com>]

Dan-

Thanks for your interest and your feedback - you raise some good points. As
for the state of data structures, my understanding, based on looking at the
source and on our own testing, is generally that you get valid data but not
necessarily complete data. To use port scanning and your two examples to
illustrate:
- For a timeout during port scanning (tested with sS/sT/sU but
maybe/probably all scan_engine-based scans), you'll get opens and closeds,
but everything else will show up as filtered (ports completed as filtered,
ports that weren't completed, and ports that weren't started);
- For a timeout during OS guessing, you won't get an OS match;
- Traceroute actually ignores host_timeout, so it will start and complete
regardless of whether the host is timed out.

That said, I'm not very familiar with Nmap's code, and our testing has only
focused on certain use cases, so this answer is hardly complete (and not
necessarily even completely correct!). It would be good to have more
rigorous testing and people much more familiar with the source weigh in
with what the implications are.

I like your ideas on identifying the incomplete results in the output. I
updated my patch with some output, as a starting point for discussion.

-chris

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