Something every system administrator will have to do from time to time, is to test if a certain port is open and reachable over the network.

There are a few ways to go about doing that.

The most common way is to use the nc or ncat or netcat utility. It can easily be used to test a port on a system. For example, to test if port 22 (for ssh) is open on a remote system, run:

# nc -zv systemname 22

Replace "systemname" with the hostname or IP address of the system to be tested. You may also test it locally on a system, by using "localhost".

This will show something like this (if the port is open):

# nc -zv localhost 22
Ncat: Version 7.50 ( https://nmap.org/ncat )
Ncat: Connected to ::1:22.
Ncat: 0 bytes sent, 0 bytes received in 0.01 seconds.

The nc utility is part of the nmap-ncat RPM package, and can be installed as follows:

# yum -y install nmap-ncat

If installing this utility is not an option, you can also directly test the port, by running this:

# bash -c "</dev/tcp/cielo/22"

If that works, no output is show, and the return-code will be 0 (zero). If it doesn't work, because the port is closed, you'll see an error message, and the return-code will be 1 (one). For example:

# bash -c "</dev/tcp/localhost/23"
bash: connect: Connection refused
bash: /dev/tcp/localhost/23: Connection refused
# echo $?
1

Finally, one other method of testing for open ports, is by using telnet, if it is installed on the system. This can be done by specifying the hostname and the port to connect to:

$ telnet localhost 22
Trying ::1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.4

If you found this useful, here's more on the same topic(s) in our blog:

• Using an alternative MAC address
• Resetting the root password for a KVM guest image
• Monitor SSH logins
• Using a proxy for wget
• Quick NFS configuration on Red Hat