Re: Patches for a log_output bugfix, and a --no-clobber implementation

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 01:33:48AM +0200, Dominic White wrote:
> Thanks for the helpful feedback David, you made a first time post
> easy. Some questions, if you wouldn't mind inline.
>
> On 14 Sep 2011, at 6:38 PM, David Fifield wrote:
> > > The second set of patches provide two methods of implementing a
> > > --no-clobber function. I regularly find myself overwriting scans by
> > > hitting the up key in my CLI, editing the options but forgetting to
> > > update the -oA argument. I know this is "human error" and the --append
> > > flag technically caters for this. However, --append doesn't fit
> > > cleanly, as a user usually wouldn't mean to append to that file in the
> > > case of error. People who, like me, have this problem can alias "nmap"
> > > to "nmap --no-clobber" in their shell environment.
> >
> > For this, have you considered using %D and %T in your log file names?
> > Those magic sequences get replaced by the current date or time. If you
> > run
> >     nmap -oA log-%T
> > then Nmap won't clobber files, unless you do it more than once a second.
>
> I have, the problem is when I am being somewhat careless in the thick
> of a pentest. Hence the want to have it alias'ed in my shell, to
> prevent such carelessness.

I'm not sure what to do about this patch. I'm afraid it may not be
useful enough to justify adding yet another option. But maybe there have
been other people who have had trouble with log files being clobbered,
and just never spoke up about it. I'm inclined to accept the patch, but
only if some people speak up for it.

David Fifield
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