How To Install netcat-traditional on Debian 10

Learn how to install netcat-traditional on Debian 10 with this tutorial. netcat-traditional is TCP/IP swiss army knife

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install netcat-traditional on Debian 10.

What is netcat-traditional

netcat-traditional is:

A simple Unix utility which reads and writes data across network connections using TCP or UDP protocol. It is designed to be a reliable “back-end” tool that can be used directly or easily driven by other programs and scripts. At the same time it is a feature-rich network debugging and exploration tool, since it can create almost any kind of connection you would need and has several interesting built-in capabilities.

This is the “classic” netcat, written by Hobbit. It lacks many features found in netcat-openbsd.

There are three methods to install netcat-traditional on Debian 10. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install netcat-traditional Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install netcat-traditional using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install netcat-traditional

Install netcat-traditional Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install netcat-traditional using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install netcat-traditional

Install netcat-traditional Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install netcat-traditional using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install netcat-traditional

How To Uninstall netcat-traditional on Debian 10

To uninstall only the netcat-traditional package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove netcat-traditional

Uninstall netcat-traditional And Its Dependencies

To uninstall netcat-traditional and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 10, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove netcat-traditional

Remove netcat-traditional Configurations and Data

To remove netcat-traditional configuration and data from Debian 10 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge netcat-traditional

Remove netcat-traditional configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove netcat-traditional configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge netcat-traditional

Dependencies

netcat-traditional have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install netcat-traditional package on Debian 10 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.