bash - Efficiently test if a port is open on Linux?

Question

From a bash script how can I quickly find out whether a port 445 is open/listening on a server.

I have tried a couple of options, but I want something quick:
1. lsof -i :445 (Takes seconds)
2. netstat -an |grep 445 |grep LISTEN (Takes seconds)
3. telnet (it doesn't return)
4. nmap, netcat are not available on the server

It will be nice to know of a way that doesn't enumerate first and greps after that.

Answer 1

A surprise I found out recently is that Bash natively supports tcp connections as file descriptors. To use:

exec 6<>/dev/tcp/ip.addr.of.server/445
echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.0
" >&6
cat <&6

I'm using 6 as the file descriptor because 0,1,2 are stdin, stdout, and stderr. 5 is sometimes used by Bash for child processes, so 3,4,6,7,8, and 9 should be safe.

As per the comment below, to test for listening on a local server in a script:

exec 6<>/dev/tcp/127.0.0.1/445 || echo "No one is listening!"
exec 6>&- # close output connection
exec 6<&- # close input connection

To determine if someone is listening, attempt to connect by loopback. If it fails, then the port is closed or we aren't allowed access. Afterwards, close the connection.

Modify this for your use case, such as sending an email, exiting the script on failure, or starting the required service.