Hacks, Linux
Installing Zenmap in Ubuntu 22.04
January 14, 2023 Jayadeva	Leave a comment

There are a few tutorials out there claiming to instruct one on installing
Zenmap in newer versions of Ubuntu, unfortunately all the ones I have found
simply do not work. The big problem is that Python 2  and pyGtk have been
completely phased out and are no longer available in Ubuntu. Attempting to
install any currently available .deb packages will result in failure.

FEAR NOT!!!! The nmap team has updated their code to Python 3 and the entire
nmap suite can be installed quite easily from source. Zenmap, with a minor
tweak to the config file will  work on Ubuntu 22.04 (LTS)!

OK, let’s get into it!

This install will be performed from the command line so get started by
opening a terminal…



1: Install prerequisites

$ sudo apt install build-essential checkinstall zlib1g-dev libssl-dev
libcurl4-openssl-dev



2: Get the source code from github

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ wget https://github.com/nmap/nmap/archive/refs/heads/master.zip -O
nmap.zip
$ unzip nmap.zip
$ cd nmap



3: Fix Zenmap config file

There is an error in the current Zenmap config file and if not fixed Zenmap
will not be able to find your nmap binary.

$ nano zenmap/share/zenmap/config/zenmap.conf

Navigate to line 60 and fix the [paths] section. Change this:

[paths]
nmap_command_path = ../nmap
ndiff_command_path = ../ndiff/ndiff

To this:

[paths]
nmap_command_path = nmap
ndiff_command_path = ndiff

If you have already gotten everything installed but Zenmap can’t find
nmap, you can do the same fix on the file in your home folder:

~/.zenmap/zenmap.conf



4: Compile and install

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install



5: Run Zenmap

For full functionality of Zenmap, it is recommended to be run as root.

$ sudo zenmap