Re: Testing packages for Zenmap on Mac OS X now available

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 05:43:38PM -0600, Nathan wrote:
> I'll address my comments to the generic "you" knowing that I really
> have no idea who is doing the actual development on this project.
>
> >  2. Make an installer that copies Nmap command-line programs to /usr/bin
> >    and Zenmap.app to /Applications.
>
> I believe the preferred location for custom command-line binaries to
> be installed on OS X is /usr/local/bin.  I vote for this option.

That's what I decided too.

> >  Zenmap doesn't run as root. I haven't found a convenient way to run it
> >  as root. You can do it by peeking inside the application bundle:
> >         sudo /Volumes/Zenmap-4.60/Zenmap.app/Contents/MacOS/zenmap
> >  But there has to be a better way. Please write nmap-dev () insecure org if
> >  you have suggestions.
>
> Why does Zenmap require to be run as root?  Isn't it just a gui?  If
> it's just to call nmap with root privileges, you should really
> consider calling nmap with sudo or something similar.  It's not
> unheard of for GUI apps who actually do need some root privileges at
> some point to use the appropriate OS X framework to prompt the user
> for their password when necessary.

That's a good point. Nmap on Mac OS X may not even need root as long as
it can read and write the /dev/bpf* devices, although the current
version insists on root. Wireshark ships with a ChmodBPF script that
gives read and write access to those devices to everyone in the admin
group. I plan to look into this.

> >  /usr/local/bin is not in the default PATH. As mentioned above, currently
> >  you have to install Nmap separately. When Nmap is compiled from source,
> >  by default it is installed in /usr/local/bin. But /usr/local/bin is
> >  *not* in the default OS X PATH! You will see an error in Zenmap:
> >  "[Errno 2] No such file or directory". I don't recommend installing Nmap
> >  with a prefix of /usr, but you can make a symbolic link from
> >  /usr/bin/nmap to /usr/local/bin/nmap and it will work fine.
>
> Ah, so that's your reason for avoiding /usr/local/bin.  Couldn't
> Zenmap simply check for /usr/local/bin/nmap explicitly?  It IS the
> default installation location, after all...

Zenmap now looks in /usr/local/bin if it can't find nmap anywhere else
on Mac OS X.

David Fifield

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