How To Install socat on Ubuntu 18.04
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install socat on Ubuntu 18.04.
What is socat
socat is:
Socat (for SOcket CAT) establishes two bidirectional byte streams and transfers data between them. Data channels may be files, pipes, devices (terminal or modem, etc.), or sockets (Unix, IPv4, IPv6, raw, UDP, TCP, SSL). It provides forking, logging and tracing, different modes for interprocess communication and many more options.
It can be used, for example, as a TCP relay (one-shot or daemon), as an external socksifier, as a shell interface to Unix sockets, as an IPv6 relay, as a netcat and rinetd replacement, to redirect TCP-oriented programs to a serial line, or to establish a relatively secure environment (su and chroot) for running client or server shell scripts inside network connections. Socat supports sctp as of 1.7.0.
There are three methods to install socat on Ubuntu 18.04. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install socat Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install socat using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install socat
Install socat Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install socat using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install socat
Install socat 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 Ubuntu. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install socat using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install socat
How To Uninstall socat on Ubuntu 18.04
To uninstall only the socat package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove socat
Uninstall socat And Its Dependencies
To uninstall socat and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 18.04, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove socat
Remove socat Configurations and Data
To remove socat configuration and data from Ubuntu 18.04 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge socat
Remove socat configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove socat configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge socat
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install socat package on Ubuntu 18.04 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.
