n guide

Interactive engineering playbooks, offline documentation & HTML export

Usage — n guide

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  Netscrew ("n") — guide (g, gui, doc) — Built-in playbooks & offline docs
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USAGE:
  n g                                  list all playbooks
  n g <topic>                          read one (e.g. ssh-windows, cgnat, uac-shares)
  n g export                           write the docs as HTML+Markdown to ./docs

Target: . = this machine · <host> = remote
Deeper: n g -h = the concept/theory behind this command

The concept behind it — n guide -h

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  Netscrew ("n") — Built-In Engineering Playbooks & Diagnostic Guides ('n doc')
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AVAILABLE PLAYBOOKS & DOCUMENTATION:
  You can view any guide offline with "n -h <slug>" or "n doc <slug>".
  To export all guides to HTML/Markdown: "n doc --export docs/"

  Cross-Platform Networking:
    linux-cifs      Linux CIFS / SMB Mounts & The Root Ownership Trap Preventing 'Permission Denied' on Linux CIFS mounts caused by missing uid/gid options, and configuring secure /etc/fstab credentials files.
    linux-nfs       Linux NFS Exports, Root Squashing & Port Requirements Understanding root_squash vs no_root_squash (UID 65534 nobody), NFSv3 vs NFSv4 port requirements (RPC 111, NFS 2049), and firewall rules.
    macos-smb       macOS SMB Speed Throttling & Network Share File Pollution Resolving 10x SMB throughput drops caused by mandatory packet signing (/etc/nsmb.conf) and preventing .DS_Store / AppleDouble pollution.

  Diagnostics:
    bench           n bench — how fast is a share, and why           What the six phases measure, why most share benchmarks lie, and how to read the verdict.

  Networking concepts:
    arp             ARP and MAC addresses — layer 2, the vendor tell, and stale neighbours An ARP entry proves a device is on your physical LAN. No entry means it's elsewhere — a VLAN, a VPN, another subnet — or asleep.
    cgnat           CGNAT — why you can't port-forward, and what to do instead Carrier-grade NAT shares one public address among many customers. Inbound connections can't reach you; Tailscale or a tunnel can.
    dns             DNS — names to addresses, and the caches that lie "It pings by IP but not by name" is always DNS. The answer can come from five layers, and each one caches — including the answer 'no'.
    gw              Default gateway — the router, and the route to everything else Every packet that isn't for your own subnet goes to the gateway. No route, or no reply, and the internet is unreachable no matter what else works.
    hops            Hops and TTL — how many routers away, and what the TTL gives away Every router a packet crosses decrements its TTL. From the reply's TTL you can count the hops and usually name the remote OS.
    http            HTTP status codes and the Server header — what a web port is telling you A three-digit code and one header say whether a web service is healthy, redirecting, locked, or broken — before you open a browser.
    ipv6            IPv6 — dual-stack, what 'inactive' means, and the one thing to watch Native IPv6 is a bonus, not a requirement. Half-working IPv6 is worse than none — that's the case to recognise.
    loop            Loopback — 127.0.0.1 and the kernel's own network stack The first check in every ladder: can this machine talk to itself? If not, no cable in the world will help.
    port-states     Port states — open, closed, filtered, and what the common ports mean A TCP port can answer three ways. Each one tells you something different about the host, its firewall and what's running.
    rtt             RTT — latency, what the numbers mean, and why 'no reply' isn't 'down' Round-trip time decides how snappy everything feels, far more than bandwidth does for small files, SSH and web pages.
    tls-certificates TLS certificates — issuer, expiry, self-signed, and what to do before it lapses netscrew reads the certificate on every HTTPS port it finds and counts down to expiry. Here's what the fields mean and when to worry.
    wan             WAN — is the internet actually reachable?        Pinging 1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8 by address separates 'the internet is down' from 'names don't resolve'. If this passes and DNS fails, it's DNS.

  Storage & Diagnostics:
    shares          Network Storage & Remote Shares Master Playbook  Cross-platform architectural reference for auditing hosted SMB/NFS shares, active remote mounts, and diagnosing access failures.

  Storage & Permissions:
    ntfs-acls       Windows Share Permissions vs. NTFS Permissions (The Intersection Trap) Why 'Everyone: Full Control' on an SMB share still yields 'Access Denied', how Share ACLs intersect with NTFS ACLs, and ICACLS remediation.
    uac-shares      Windows UAC Mapped Drive Isolation & EnableLinkedConnections Why network drives mapped in elevated admin prompts vanish from Windows Explorer, and how EnableLinkedConnections links them.

  System & Hardware:
    disk            Storage Capacity, Health Thresholds & Filesystem Triage Disk usage warning (>80%) and critical (>95%) thresholds, SSD endurance, TRIM, Linux inode exhaustion (df -i), and NTFS dirty bit recovery.
    sys             System & Hardware Diagnostics Playbook           Decoding hardware DMI, CPU core utilization spikes, RAM module MT/s transfer rates and dual-channel verification, and GPU driver detection.