Linux – Log all incoming and outgoing requests using nc command

command-line-interfacelinuxnetworking

I have a web server listening at 8080, I want to use the nc command to listen at port 80, so all incoming request and outgoing response are logged into two files, namely inflow and outflow.

I have followed the link at http://smaftoul.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/netcat-as-a-logging-tcp-proxy/, not work as expected.

 cat proxypipe | nc -l -p 80 | tee -a inflow | nc localhost 81 | tee -a outflow 1>proxypipe
usage: nc [-46DdhklnrStUuvzC] [-i interval] [-P proxy_username] [-p source_port]
          [-s source_ip_address] [-T ToS] [-w timeout] [-X proxy_protocol]
          [-x proxy_address[:port]] [hostname] [port[s]]

Best Answer

Take a close look at the help output netcat is giving you

usage: ... [-p source_port] ...
       ... [hostname] [port[s]]

The -p option to netcat species the source port, which you generally don't care about. If you remove the -p, it should work just fine:

nc -l 80

At least, this will make netcat listen for connections on port 80. Whether this will make your logging proxy work or not I can't say.

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