Is anybody else not able to get nc -lp 8888 working on Mac OS X? Is there another way to get this to work?

3

4 Answers

It looks to me as if the -p option does nothing on the OS X version of netcat. To get it to work, I must do nc -l localhost 8888.

8

Here's how this is working for me on OS X 10.10, with either the installed BSD version, or the one from Homebrew:

BSD Version

When using the BSD version that ships with OS X, a server can be started like this

/usr/bin/nc -l 9999

Homebrew

• Install using Homebrew: brew install netcat
• This will install v0.7.1 of
• One can use either the nc or netcat command. nc is an alias for netcat.

To start a server:

nc -l -p 9999

To start a client:

nc targethost 9999

To get the manpage of this version, one needs to use man netcat, as man nc will open the manpage of the BSD version.

I needed to test a web service over SSL, which ncat (made by the nmap team) supports.

brew install nmap
ncat -C --ssl api.somecompany.com 443

nc on MacOS has too many bugs, and Apple did none patch for years. the netcat from homebrew is a very low version. use ncat from nmap instead

3

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Sign up using Google Sign up using Facebook Sign up using Email and Password Submit

Post as a guest

Post Your Answer Discard

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy