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Show HN: My shell script for HTTP/HTTPS troubleshooting and profiling

github.com

155 pointstrimstray26 comments

Not to rain on your parade with nicely formatted code like hardly any shell projects do, but what I would have expected for such a tool that I just want to use:

wget https://github/.../releases/.../stable/htrace.sh

Only gave it a quick look and saw the other comment asking for dependencies. if there are some, why not list them in the README.

I'm really not against installers, but falls under the "small handy tool" category and not "I will spend time automating the install, either it works or it doesn't"

This page talks about which packages to install, and how to install them:

https://github.com/trimstray/htrace.sh/issues/18

Those instructions definitely need to be in the installation section!!

You're crazy. This fellow deserves all of today's internet points. He even has a man page!

The project/script is freaking great, it's well-written but its installation method needs some work.

It symlinks from the git cloned directory to /usr/local/bin during installation.

When it runs, it does helpfully tell you which tools it needs, but each of those tools has a different install method:

* two are system packages

* one is a Go executable

* another a php composer package

* another is installed via npm

(that's a lot of extra language dependencies for a single script if you don't already have everything installed)

It'd be a great/easy to use docker image. I'd go that route before I'd worry about npm/php/golang on my system.

dockerfile is also available: https://github.com/trimstray/htrace.sh/blob/master/build/Doc...

That would be worthwhile in the README! If you agree I'll PR the instructions

Sure. PRs welcome!

Just swung around to this. You are killing it :P

(good job!)

I'm really sorry to the OP if I seemed annoyed, but I was merely stating my first impression.

I'm not a big fan of shell scripts for complicated tasks, but their main benefit is exactly "one file, runs everywhere, it just works" - if you take away all three of those I question if it's the right choice being a shell script. For tools of this scope I really like go. stuff everything together as a static binary and you're good to go.

For that, look to testssl.sh (https://github.com/drwetter/testssl.sh)

Plug for a related tool that I use constantly.

It's called Swiss Army Knife for SMTP, or "SWAKS" for short.

http://www.jetmore.org/john/code/swaks/

This tool is one of the best tools I've ever seen. It's well thought out, well designed, and the documentation is very usable.

(Full disclosure: I have no affiliation with the author or the tool.)

One comment: put the list of package dependencies before the install, or check for their packages during setup.sh

Make life a little easier for the user ;)

Looks really cool.

Why are you using a URL in place of a domain name, in the invocation example? Seems confusing. I would expect to see just a domain name there. Although I wouldn't complain if it works with both a domain and a full URL, automatically stripping off the parts it doesn't need. Also seeing http:// instead of https:// is starting to feel strange these days, but I do realize both are still used and your tool works with both as it should.

Very nice readme! And nice to see it has a man page. I would leave out the "It's simple:" line because that tends to make less confident people (like new people just learning) blame themselves if they have problems, and then instead of giving you feedback they'll give up and move on.

Great job. Small nitpick. Agree —domain should probably be called —url instead. Domain implies no scheme.

as others said , dependecies need to be sorted. other than that i think this is quite cool and i will use it.

I suggest a convenient way to set cookie or auth headers. A lot of endpoints are behind authentication. The --req-headers flag is feasible, but there should be a shortcut flag just for authentication headers. Maybe --cookie and --auth ?

ok, i'll add issue for this, thx.

https://github.com/trimstray/htrace.sh/issues/50

I'll update this project with your suggestions from this thread.

Thank you for your support!

Here is a similar tool all contained in one shell script that only depends on openssl. [1] Albeit, a bit more verbose and doesn't have that nice one page output.

[1] - https://github.com/drwetter/testssl.sh

Also helpful, with zero dependencies (in PERL): https://github.com/portcullislabs/ssl-cipher-suite-enum

Nice.

It's a step up from httpie, which is nice to craft requests, but not to check for security.

Looks really, really useful. Bookmarked, cloned, and shared with my team!

Thanks. All suggestions/PR are welcome.

Bookmarked, looks useful. Kudos!

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