topic Re: Showing your network neighborhood in Operating System - Linux

Showing your network neighborhood

Francis Ancheta — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 05:53:50 GMT

How do I show my network neighborhood in Linux.

Is there a command to show who else is connected in my network?

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Jerome Henry — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 05:59:20 GMT

That's a windows concept, based on Netbios protocol. Linux is working under TCP/IP,

if your network is based on windows, you need to install a package named samab, which emulates windos, and the a graphical tool like jags to see neighborhood.
http://www.samba.org/
http://jags.sourceforge.net/download.php

hth

J

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Stuart Browne — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 06:05:15 GMT

If you don't mind using a text based interface (and 'samba' is already installed), you can use 'smbclient -L' to view the NetBios (over TCP) network..

It's a very powerful tool.. ;) have fun.

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Francis Ancheta — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 06:22:44 GMT

have already Samba running and its not much help I can only browse servers I describe. Just wondered if there is an easier way to audit my network.

Like how do find out that there are PC's connected to the network that I have not authorized.

I have not yet used subnet restrictions, like limiting my network to only a few IP's, presently my subnet can accommodate more than I should and I would like to track all PC's that are connected to it.

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:19:54 GMT

yes, you can see your "network neighborhood" from Linux:

http://us3.samba.org/samba/GUI/ - I suggest you to try gnomba, Konqueror and xSMBrowser for browsing

You can try LinNeighborhood
too (http://www.bnro.de/~schmidjo/), but it seems to be outdated

Regards,
Vitaly.

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Claudio Cilloni — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:27:56 GMT

maybe i didn't understand well, but if you want know just a list of the machines that are present in your network, you can build a script that tries to ping every possibile private ip address, and it shows only the addresses that give an answer. Maybe there is a tool that do this (instead of writing a script. But I think it isn't too difficult).

bye
Claudio

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 08:03:42 GMT

On a basic level thats easy.

Ping the broadcast address for the network.

If the broadcast address is 192.168.0.254 ping int and every live machine on the network will show up.

When you mentioned network neighborhood, everyone, including myself thought about how the one in Windows works, all nice and graphical.

SEP

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 08:55:14 GMT

In fact, "network neighborhoods" it is not only machines in your network, so broadcast doesn't help to discover all neighborhoods.

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Jerome Henry — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 08:59:46 GMT

Steven got the clue, just ping broadcast and everything will answer.

If you want graphical tool, any ipcscan for linux will do.

If you want network neighborhood, adding to Vitaly I still prefer jags over lineighbor and gnomba...

:]

J

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Francis Ancheta — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:25:18 GMT

I tried pinging the broadcast but it does not work it would only list 2 machines where I have about 10 machines connected in my subnet. 3 linux machines and the rest are microsoft machines.

Jag and the other SMB viewers are fine viewers for SMB enabled linux box's and microsoft but for none Linux box's that does not have SMB enabled I would not be able to check these workstations.

Sorry for the confusion but here is basically what I need to do.

Scenario:

I am planning to put up a wireless network with DHCP enabled. My plans are to put a subnet that can cater about 126 ip's. using .255.128 as my subnet. My problem now is how will I know that all pc's connected to my network are valid PC's using my linux box as a monitoring tool. I do not want to use Cisco as my wireless module since it is very expensive I found a cheaper but less secure box. My problem now is how to monitor all ip's used.

With DHCP my DHCP server I can monitor those that are given a DHCP address but for those using a static ip I would not be able to monitor. I was presented with a commercial solution but I believe there is a much cheaper solution out there.

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Balaji N — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:54:49 GMT

until i was using KDE, komba was the best client i had come across which was similar to the network neighborhood.

it will list all the nodes in the domain and can be configured to mount / unmount shares.

unfortunately, googling doesnt give me the correct links. u can search for them in the KDE sites.

-balaji

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Caesar_3 — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:54:57 GMT

Hello!

For the win systems that you have, so they
would answer to broadcast ping thats something that microsoft made in they systems.
So brodcast ping would help with win stations.

You can make list of posable networks and
make script that will generate IPs that you
will ping and get know if they up.

Or if you know the IPs of all your stations
create list of them and script that will check
them.

Also you can use samba, http://localhost:901
for configuratin it.

Caesar

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Jerome Henry — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 10:38:52 GMT

Why don't you se a toll like big brother ?
It's graphical
It scans for linux and not linx, as based on tcp/ip

http://bb4.com/

Many other tools can do this, check at :
http://www.portalux.com/networking/net-monitoring/

J

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Balaji N — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 11:25:48 GMT

caesar,

sorry to nitpick.

it is swat. which runs on port 901.
-balaji

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 12:20:43 GMT

I have found that when 2 out of 10 machines on the subnet respond to a ping broadcast one of the following things is true:

1) The microsoft machine isn't on
2) The 8 machines not responding are not configured correctly.

There is a way to really solve this problem.

Put samba server(Linux) CIFS/9000(HP-UX) on all the Unix machines.

Add an account for each of the Unix machines onto the primary domain controller.

Now you can actually use the Windows Network Neighborhood to browse the network from a windows box.

But you want to do it on Linux.

Command prompt good enough or do you want GUI?

SEP

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Francis Ancheta — Sat, 21 Jun 2003 01:00:53 GMT

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Francis Ancheta — Sat, 21 Jun 2003 01:03:46 GMT

Hi Steven,

Any will do. A command prompt which will not require a script will do.

I will take a look at Jerome's suggestion.

I just got this feeling that there is a way I can look at my linux neighborhood and microsoft in just one tool or command.

Thanks guys for the effort.

Steven, by the way the firewall configuration you showed me guided me a lot. I learned a great deal about firewalls this week, thanks to you guys. I should have done this forum 8 years ago when I was still learning Microsoft.

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Francis Ancheta — Sat, 21 Jun 2003 03:10:52 GMT

I saw a good security scanner (Nmap) and its built in to RH installation.

http://www.insecure.org/nmap/index.html

there are a lot of options to choose from great for creating a script. It also has a gui just incase.

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Sergejs Svitnevs — Sat, 21 Jun 2003 10:46:41 GMT

Try to use xSMBroswer. It uses your samba configuration and gives you a network neighborhood "like" GUI.

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~chadspen/xsmbrowser.html

Regards,
Sergejs

Re: Showing your network neighborhood

Caesar_3 — Sun, 22 Jun 2003 18:45:49 GMT

Hello!

To Balaji N,
you wright the 901 port it's SWAT = Samba Web Administration Tool!
That's what i wrote about.

Caesar