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Quick Start Guide

Get up and running with Pentora in 5 minutes. This guide walks you through basic scanning operations.

Prerequisites​

  • Pentora installed (Installation Guide)
  • Network access to target systems
  • Administrator/root privileges for network scanning

Your First Scan​

Basic Network Scan​

Scan a single IP address:

pentora scan 192.168.1.100

Output:

[INFO] Starting scan: 192.168.1.100
[INFO] Discovery: 1 host alive
[INFO] Scanning ports: 22,80,443,3306,5432,6379,8080...
[INFO] Open ports found: 22, 80, 443

Host: 192.168.1.100
┌──────┬──────────┬─────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ Port │ Protocol │ State   │ Service                    │
├──────┼──────────┼─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 22   │ tcp      │ open    │ SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_8.9p1      │
│ 80   │ tcp      │ open    │ HTTP/1.1 (nginx/1.21.6)    │
│ 443  │ tcp      │ open    │ HTTPS (nginx/1.21.6)       │
└──────┴──────────┴─────────┴────────────────────────────┘

Scan completed in 2.34s

Scan Multiple Hosts​

# Scan CIDR range
pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24

# Scan multiple IPs
pentora scan 192.168.1.100,192.168.1.101,192.168.1.102

# Scan IP range
pentora scan 192.168.1.100-110

Custom Port Scanning​

# Scan specific ports
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --ports 22,80,443,8080

# Scan port range
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --ports 1-1000

# Scan all common ports
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --ports common

# Scan all 65535 ports
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --ports all

Scan Modes​

Discovery Only​

Quickly find live hosts without port scanning:

pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --only-discover

Output:

Discovered 12 active hosts:
192.168.1.1    (gateway)
192.168.1.10   (server)
192.168.1.100  (workstation)
...

Skip Discovery​

Scan known hosts directly (faster when targets are known):

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --no-discover

Vulnerability Scanning​

Enable vulnerability assessment:

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --vuln

Output includes CVE matches:

Host: 192.168.1.100
Port 22: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.4
  ⚠️  CVE-2018-15919 (Medium): OpenSSH remote code execution
  ⚠️  CVE-2016-0777 (High): Information disclosure vulnerability

Port 80: Apache/2.4.29
  🔴 CVE-2021-44790 (Critical): Buffer overflow in mod_lua

Output Formats​

JSON Export​

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --format json -o results.json

CSV Export​

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --format csv -o results.csv

PDF Report​

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --format pdf -o report.pdf

Multiple Formats​

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 -o results.json -o report.pdf

Performance Tuning​

Concurrency​

Control scan speed with concurrency settings:

# Slow, stealthy scan
pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --rate 10

# Fast scan (default)
pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --rate 100

# Maximum speed (aggressive)
pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --rate 1000 --timeout 500ms

Timeout Configuration​

# Quick timeout for fast networks
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --timeout 200ms

# Longer timeout for slow networks
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --timeout 5s

Workspace Operations​

List Scans​

View all stored scans:

pentora workspace list

Output:

┌───────────────────┬────────────┬─────────────────────┬────────┐
│ Scan ID           │ Targets    │ Timestamp           │ Status │
├───────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────┼────────┤
│ scan-2025-10-06-1 │ 192.168... │ 2025-10-06 10:30:15 │ done   │
│ scan-2025-10-06-2 │ 10.0.0...  │ 2025-10-06 11:15:42 │ done   │
└───────────────────┴────────────┴─────────────────────┴────────┘

View Scan Details​

pentora workspace show scan-2025-10-06-1

Export Scan​

pentora workspace export scan-2025-10-06-1 --format json -o export.json

Clean Up Old Scans​

# Delete scans older than 30 days
pentora workspace gc --older-than 30d

# Delete all but last 10 scans
pentora workspace gc --keep-last 10

Practical Examples​

Web Server Assessment​

pentora scan example.com --ports 80,443,8080,8443 --vuln

Database Server Scan​

pentora scan 192.168.1.50 --ports 3306,5432,1433,27017 --vuln

Full Network Audit​

pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 \
  --ports all \
  --vuln \
  --format pdf \
  -o network-audit-$(date +%Y%m%d).pdf

Continuous Monitoring​

# Scan and compare with previous results
pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --compare-with scan-2025-10-05-1

Configuration File​

Create a reusable scan profile:

# ~/.config/pentora/config.yaml
scan:
  default_ports: [22,80,443,3306,5432,8080]
  timeout: 2s
  rate: 100

workspace:
  dir: /var/pentora/workspace
  retention: 90d

logging:
  level: info
  format: json

Run with config:

pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --config ~/.config/pentora/config.yaml

Common Use Cases​

1. Quick Port Check​

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --ports 22,80,443

2. Service Discovery​

pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --only-discover

3. Vulnerability Assessment​

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --vuln --format pdf -o vuln-report.pdf

4. Compliance Scan​

pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --compliance pci-dss --format pdf

5. Scheduled Scanning​

# Add to crontab
0 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --vuln -o /var/reports/daily-scan.json

Stateless Mode​

Run without workspace persistence (like Nmap):

pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --no-workspace

Results print to stdout only, nothing saved to disk.

Getting Help​

Command Help​

# General help
pentora --help

# Command-specific help
pentora scan --help

# List all commands
pentora --help

Check Version​

pentora version

Enable Verbose Output​

# Detailed logs
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --verbose

# Debug-level logging
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --verbosity debug

Next Steps​

Now that you've run basic scans, explore:

Troubleshooting​

Permission Errors​

# Run with sudo for network scans
sudo pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24

Slow Scans​

# Increase concurrency
pentora scan 192.168.1.0/24 --rate 500

No Results​

# Enable debug logging
pentora scan 192.168.1.100 --verbosity debug

For more troubleshooting, see the Troubleshooting Guide.