how to lookup a hostname of a networked computer

otkaz · 06-17-2009, 08:31 AM

is there a command or terminal app that can lookup the hostname of a networked computer? doesn't matter to me if its by mac or ip.
I'm using ubuntu

onebuck · 06-17-2009, 08:50 AM

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

You could 'arp';

Quote:

excerpt from 'man arp';
arp - Linux ARP kernel module.
DESCRIPTION
This kernel protocol module implements the Address Resolution Protocol defined in RFC 826. It is used to convert between Layer2 hardware addresses and IPv4 protocol addresses on directly connected networks. The user normally doesn't interact directly with this module except to configure it; instead it provides a service for other protocols in the kernel.

A user process can receive ARP packets by using packet(7) sockets. There is also a mechanism for managing the ARP cache in user-space by using netlink(7) sockets. The ARP table can also be controlled via ioctl (2) on any PF_INET socket.

The ARP module maintains a cache of mappings between hardware addresses and protocol addresses. The cache has a limited size so old and less frequently used entries are garbage-collected. Entries which are marked as permanent are never deleted by the garbage-collector. The cache can be directly manipulated by the use of ioctls and its behaviour can be tuned by the sysctls defined below.

When there is no positive feedback for an existing mapping after some time (see the sysctls below) a neighbour cache entry is considered stale. Positive feedback can be gotten from a higher layer; for example from a successful TCP ACK. Other protocols can signal forward progress using the MSG_CONFIRM flag to sendmsg(2). When there is no forward progress ARP tries to reprobe. It first tries to ask a local arp daemon app_solicit times for an updated MAC address. If that fails and an old MAC address is known an unicast probe is send ucast_solicit times. If that fails too it will broadcast a new ARP request to the network. Requests are only send when there is data queued for sending.

Linux will automatically add a non-permanent proxy arp entry when it receives a request for an address it forwards to and proxy arp is enabled on the receiving interface. When there is a reject route for the target no proxy arp entry is added.

BTW, 'arp -a' will provide you with information for your LAN in a 'BSD' format.

otkaz · 06-17-2009, 09:11 AM

awesome thanks onebuck that was exactly what I was looking for. I knew about arp command, but never noticed it returned the hostname. I was using nmap -PN 192.168.1.65 | grep -e 'Interesting ports on' | awk '{print $4}' but it was very slow

otkaz · 06-17-2009, 10:02 AM

arp -a only seems to have entries after I scan the ip with nmap, but has nothing before the scan...

farslayer · 06-17-2009, 10:21 AM

reverse lookup if you have DNS running on your network..

dig -x ip.add.re.ss