How to scan for ip addresses in a local network?
 

Hi,

I am setting up some friends with Linux and as I expect to support them I want to setup a secure VNC connection.

I have it all setup so that i ssh into their machine, setup the port forwarding and connect via VNC. Splendid!!

The problem that i might have is that i ssh into their network but I won't know what ip address their machine is at, so my question is:

Is there any easy way to scan their local network for ip addresses that are up?

I know there is nmap - but with this you have to specify the start of the ipaddress and a range to scan - is their no way to just scan a network for available ip's?


Cheers

ice.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/multiscan
Well... set the start IP to 0.0.0.0 and the end to 255.255.255.255 (but what about ipv6?)

If you know what sort of network it is you can narrow that down:
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255

I mean - how is the program supposed to know what to scan if you don't tell it?

So... ask them?

I don't see where nmap is all that difficult, it's a very short, simple command to do a network scan
That will do a simple PING scan of the entire 192.168.1.0 subnet, and resolve names via DNS if possible and list everything found for you.

Thanks for the replies.

'asking' them i am often met with 'ip address?? whats that and how do i get it' - sometimes i just want to be able to say 'i will log in later and fix it for you'.

Sounds like i will stick with nmap.

Cheers

ice.

So you ask the sysadmin... wait: that's you!

How are you SSHing into their network if you don't know the machine's IP?

If they're on residential connections, you'll need to configure port forwarding on their router and then just give their box a static IP via the DHCP server (or... eww... manually).

how about this then? automatically picks up all local ethernet subnets and in cidr format and scans them all. probably a better way to get the IP, but that'll do in my world.

i have setup a dyndns, so getting to the network and doing port fwding for the one machine is simple:


My problem was with the fact if there is more than one computer on the network that I may need to support - then i have to change the 'localhost' to the ip address of the computer i wish to VNC into.

As for the router fwding port 22 - i only want 1 machine to have a static ip on the local lan.

However, there appears to have been some good suggestions so I will give those a try.

Thanks

ice.

or setup something like ssl-explorer which can be hit through a single gateway and used to access multiple machines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSL-Exp...munity_Edition

Thanks for the suggestion - will look into that.


Cheers.

ice.

update to scanning IP addresses in Ubuntu question
 

may I suggest a nice application called: UMIT
downloadable via the Ubuntu Software Center
It's a graphical interface for "nmap" command line
all your IP scan needs under one roof.