Nessus-Service

If necessary, whenever possible, you should start and stop Nessus services using Nessus service controls in your operating system’s interface.

However, there are many nessus-service functions that you can perform through a command line interface.

Unless otherwise specified, you can use the nessusd command interchangeably with nessus-service server commands.

You can use the # killall nessusd command to stop all Nessus services and in-process scans.

Note: You must have administrative privileges to run the following commands.

Nessus-Service Syntax

Operating System Command

Linux

# /opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-service [-vhD] [-c <config-file>] [-p <port-number>] [-a <address>] [-S <ip[,ip,…​]>]

macOS

# /Library/Nessus/run/sbin/nessus-service [-vhD] [-c <config-file>] [-p <port-number>] [-a <address>] [-S <ip[,ip,…​]>]

Suppress Command Output Examples

You can suppress command output by using the -q option

Linux

# /opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-service -q -D

Nessusd Commands

Option Description

-c <config-file>

When starting the nessusd server, this option specifies the server-side nessusd configuration file to use. It allows for the use of an alternate configuration file instead of the standard db.

-S <ip[,ip2,…]>

When starting the nessusd server, force the source IP of the connections established by Nessus during scanning to <ip>. This option is only useful if you have a multihomed machine with multiple public IP addresses that you would like to use instead of the default one. For this setup to work, the host running nessusd must have multiple NICs with these IP addresses set.

-D

When starting the nessusd server, this option forces the server to run in the background (daemon mode).

-v

Display the version number and exit.

-l

Display a list of those third-party software licenses.

-h

Show a summary of the commands and exit.

--ipv4-only

Only listen on IPv4 socket.

--ipv6-only

Only listen on IPv6 socket.

-q

Operate in "quiet" mode, suppressing all messages to stdout.

-R

Force a reprocessing of the plugins.

-t

Check the time stamp of each plugin when starting up to only compile newly updated plugins.

-K

Set a parent password for the scanner.

If you set a parent password, Nessus encrypts all policies and credentials contained in the policy. When you set a password, the Nessus user interface prompts you for the password.

Caution: If you set your parent password and lose it, neither your administrator nor Tenable Support can recover it.

Notes

If you are running nessusd on a gateway and if you do not want people on the outside to connect to your nessusd, set your listen_address advanced setting.

To set this setting:

nessuscli fix --set listen_address=<IP address>

This setting tells the server to only listen to connections on the address <address> that is an IP address, not a machine name.