Thus far, you have used your local copy of Nmap to scan remote systems. Remote Nmap (Rnmap) enables a client system to connect to a central Nmap server. Developed by Tuomo Makinen, it is designed to allow network administrators a central Nmap source that is easy to administer and update. It is currently in beta, but both the client and the server are quite strong. Rnmap has the following features:

• User authentication
• A command-line and GUI client
• Available encryption (still in beta form)

You can download Rnmap from http://rnmap.sourceforge.net. Rnmap is written in the Python scripting language, which means that your Linux system must have Python installed. Standard installations usually have Python installed, but you can check for its presence using the following RPM command:

rpm -qa pyth<a name="314"></a><a name="beginpage.D955D3B6-0967-412E-B151-36D59B0C14D1"></a>

If you do not see any references to Python, download it from www.rpmfind .net, or obtain it from your installation disks. If you do not use RPM, you can search for the file using the find command:

find / -name python

Usually, the python interpreter is located at /usr/bin/python. Once Python is installed, you can then use the client and the server after unzipping them from their tarfile. No compilation is necessary, because the scripts for the server and the front end use the python interpreter. Because Python is portable between various operating systems, Rnmap is equally as portable.