LFT is a zippy alternative to tracreoute, the old standby for pinning down latency and dropped connections. But while traceroute takes 20-30 seconds to determine all the hops in a path, LFT does the job in about a second.
Input
ian@home:~$ lft www.thoughtdeposit.net
Output
Tracing ……………T
TTL LFT trace to 63.76.232.167:80/tcp
1 192.168.0.30 20.2ms
2 37.125.55.1 40.3ms
3 12.161.11.1 20.2ms
4 12.119.243.101 20.1ms
5 gbr2-p30.dtrmi.ip.att.net (12.123.208.62) 20.1ms
6 tbr2-cl18.cgcil.ip.att.net (12.122.10.134) 40.2ms
7 ggr1-p3100.chail.ip.att.net (12.123.4.17) 20.2ms
8 p2-2.ir1.chicago2-il.us.xo.net (206.111.2.121) 20.1ms
9 p5-0-0.rar2.chicago-il.us.xo.net (65.106.6.137) 40.2ms
10 p4-0-0.mar2.marylandheights-mo.us.xo.net (65.106.6.162) 40.2ms
11 p15-0.chr1.marylandheights-mo.us.xo.net (207.88.84.78 ) 40.2ms
12 66.236.121.50.ptr.us.xo.net (66.236.121.50) 40.2ms
13 host162.datotel.com (63.97.187.162) 40.2ms
14 [target] 63.76.232.167:80 40.2ms
Source, Debian package, and OSX Installer are all available.
Technorati Tags: command line, lft, linux, macintosh, networking, osx, tip, traceroute
If you need to figure out what a unix program does fast, whatis can tell you.
ian@thoughtdeposit.net:~$ whatis rsync
rsync (1) - faster, flexible replacement for rcp
Whatis simply sucks out the program’s man page description field, and barfs it onto the screen.
Technorati Tags: command line, linux
OSX has a command line port scanner. It’s just super sekrit is all. The questionably named stroke command, is part of Network Utility, which is nestled in your Utilities folder. Normally it’s only exposed through Network Utility’s GUI, but there is a way to get at it from your command prompt.
First, create a link to stroke, preferably somewhere in your $PATH.
ian@mymac:~$ ln /Applications/Utilities/Network\ Utility.app/Contents/Resources/stroke stroke
Next make it executable, if it isn’t already.
ian@mymac:~$ chmod uo+x stroke
Now let’s do a port scan. We will scan the localhost, ports 49152 thru 65535.
ian@mymac:~$ ./stroke 127.0.0.1 49152 65535
Can you install nmap, or even nessus instead? Absolutely. But in an, ehrm, pinch — stroke will do nicely.
Technorati Tags: command line, howto, macintosh, microsoft, osx, port scan, security
You know you have spent too much time in unix when you use a unix command to remind you it’s time to step away from the terminal, and go feed the dog. Leave does just that.
leave +0115
This will remind you an hour and fifteen minutes from now to leave your command prompt. If you stay put, it will keep pestering you until you go nuts.
(Depending on your distro, leave may not be standard. In Debian, apt-get install leave will get it installed for you)