Ansible Role: Netcat

Ansible role that installs Netcat on Linux.

Features

• ✔️ Installing Netcat
• ✔️ You can choose which flavor to install:
  • ncat - Ncat was written for the Nmap Project as a much-improved reimplementation of the venerable Netcat
  • cryptcat - A lightweight version netcat extended with twofish encryption
  • openbsd
  • traditional
• ✔️ Creates (if missing) aliases to nc and netcat
• ✔️ Tested with Molecule Verify

Note: There are couple versions of "netcat". Ie. Debian provides netcat-openbsd or netcat-traditional, where those are not ported/compiled to CentOS. This is why I decided to give possibility to install only above two versions, are those two exists both for Debian and CentOS. So you will get the same experiance on all your machines.

Supported Platforms

• ✔️ Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic)
• ✔️ Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal)
• ✔️ CentOS 7
• ✔️ CentOS 8

Requirements

None

Role Variables

Variable	Description	Default Value
netcat_install	List of flavors to install	['ncat']
netcat_alias_to	No which app should point nc and netcat aliases?	ncat

Dependencies

None

Example Playbook

1. The simplest one

   ---
   - hosts: all
     roles:
       - marverix.netcat
   

2. Install ncat and cryptcat; aliases should point to cryptcat

   ---
   - hosts: all
     roles:
       - role: marverix.netcat
         vars:
           netcat_install:
             - ncat
             - cryptcat
           netcat_alias_to: cryptcat

License

ISC