[SOLVED] what is 'socat' and what is it used for? Ubuntu-15.04

MrUmunhum · 09-29-2015, 04:30 PM

hi group,

I have a problem with my Ubuntu 15.04 Linux on my laptop. When
I boot this command starts:

Code:

 2747 ?        R     10:59 socat openssl-connect:server:789,cafile=/etc/epoptes/server.crt,interval=60,forever EXEC:bash -c \"exec -a epoptes-client sh\"

I have no idea what it is and what it does? It hangs one
of my processors at 100% until I kill it.

Can anyone help? Have I been hacked?

Thanks for your time.

michaelk · 09-29-2015, 06:08 PM

From the socat man page

Quote:

Socat is a command line based utility that establishes two bidirectional byte streams and transfers data between them.

But I found this thread interesting because epoptes is a computer lab management and monitoring tool and would not expect it to be installed by default. Its probably trying to login to some default server configuration. Is it a running service?

systemctl list-unit-files type=service

http://www.epoptes.org/

Habitual · 09-29-2015, 06:19 PM

I was thinking Ubuntu's Landscape thingie...?

MrUmunhum · 09-29-2015, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michaelk

From the socat man page

But I found this thread interesting because epoptes is a computer lab management and monitoring tool and would not expect it to be installed by default. Its probably trying to login to some default server configuration. Is it a running service?

systemctl list-unit-files type=service

http://www.epoptes.org/

Code:

sudo systemctl list-unit-files type=service
UNIT FILE STATE

0 unit files listed.

michaelk · 09-29-2015, 09:41 PM

Try
sudo systemctl list-unit-files

MrUmunhum · 09-30-2015, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by michaelk

Try
sudo systemctl list-unit-files

That is a very long list 305 files. Anyway to shorten the list?

michaelk · 09-30-2015, 04:37 PM

Not sure why I didn't see my mistake... The command should be:
sudo systemctl list-unit-files --type=service

You can try grep
sudo systemctl list-unit-files --type=service | grep epoptes

MrUmunhum · 09-30-2015, 04:50 PM

I removed epoptes-client and epoptes, that stopped the socat command. While this did not tell me what it was for, my system does not loop anymore.

MrUmunhum · 10-04-2015, 11:47 AM

As a quick note. Removing this package also solved by delayed shutdown problem. That problem was when I shutdown the system it waited 1 and 1/2 minutes waiting for a process to end.