nc missing option -z

[Suvayu Ali]

Hi Ed and James,

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 09:45:05AM +0000, James Hogarth wrote:
> >   $ nmap -Pn -p993 imap.gmail.com |& grep -q 'Host is up' && { ... }
> >
> > And of course someday the printed text will change and I'll have to edit
> > my scripts again!  Oh well.  :-/
> >
> 
> 
> Host is up wouldn't be right - you need to parse to see if the port is
> listed as open or closed...
> 
> Something like:
> 
> nmap  -Pn -p993  imap.gmail.com | awk '$1 ~ /993/ {print $2}'  | grep open

I read the man page, but wasn't thinking when I wrote the grep line :-p.
You are right, looking for the port/service is the correct way.

I think the older package was nc, but I'm not very much in for of
checking versions.  That would unnecessarily complicate my simple
scripts.  I cannot use tcping as Ed suggested because it is not
installed in these other systems, hence parsing nmap output seems my
only viable option.

Thanks a lot for all the help.

Cheers,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.