Netcat: stdin/stdout over network

Recently I wanted to transfer data over the local network. I had to make an image of a drive, so I used dd.

To do this I used nc to redirect stdin and sdtout as follows:

It’s important to set up the destination host first:

nc -l -p <port> > output.img

On the source host you start the transfer with

dd if=/dev/sda1 | nc <host> <port>

nc is not limited to dd, you can redirect any stream you want to.