nmap could not locate nse_main.lua

Question

When I try to use the following nmap -p 443 -Pn --script=ssl-cert ip_address I get the following error:

Starting Nmap 7.70 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2019-06-04 15:20 UTC
NSE: failed to initialize the script engine:
could not locate nse_main.lua
stack traceback:
    [C]: in ?

QUITTING!

the response for nmap --version is

Nmap version 7.70 ( https://nmap.org )
Platform: x86_64-alpine-linux-musl
Compiled with: liblua-5.3.5 openssl-1.1.1a libssh2-1.8.0 libz-1.2.11 libpcre-8.42 libpcap-1.9.0-PRE-GIT nmap-libdnet-1.12 ipv6
Compiled without:
Available nsock engines: epoll poll select

Galagalactagogue

I was install nmap from deb which was converted with alien from rpm. Got the same. Reinstalling nmap helped. – Spurry

Same error here, reinstall does nothing – Ridgway

Answer 1

You need to install the package nmap-scripts as well, as this is not installed automatically on Alpine (see here).

So simply run apk add nmap-scripts or add it to your dockerfile.

Ridgway