lancat is a tool that extend the behavior of cat linux utility to the LAN.
It sends a multicast message for searching lancat listeners in the LAN,
then creates one-to-one tcp connection for each listener found in order to transfer the information
in a reliable way and without saturating the network.
lancat is a rust application, so you can use the cargo package manager in order to install it.
For it, place into the repository and run:
$ cargo install --path .
If you have ~/.cargo/bin in your PATH, you will be able to use lancat everywhere in your computer!
It has two main modes. First of them is to send to the LAN, and the second one is to listen from the LAN.
For writing data to the LAN, run:
$ lancat
hello lan
Furthermore, you can redirect the standard input from a file to send it into the LAN:
$ lancat < to_share.txt
For listening data from the LAN run lancat in listen mode with -l:
$ lancat -l
=========== username - 192.168.1.35:43230 ===========
hello lan
Or if you want to send the incoming data to a file, you can redirect the standard output:
$ lancat -l -q > shared.txt
the -q flag (also --quiet) will avoid to send the user name line into the file.
By default lancat notifies to the LAN with your OS user name.
It is possbile to change this name with the -n flag.
You can filter for sending or receiving messages only for certain users:
$ lancat -u user1 user2
$ lancat -l -u user1 user2
In order to see which users are listening the lan, you can run lancat in the search mode with -s:
$ lancat -s
Found 'user1' at: 192.168.1.72:44435
Found 'user2' at: 192.168.1.72:44439
Found 'user3' at: 192.168.1.54:44432
For see all available options see the help: lancat --help.
We send a message filtering by user1:
$ echo "Hello user1" | lancat -u user1
We receive messages filtering by user2:
$ lancat -l -q -u user2
Hello user1
Only users with names user1 and user2 will be able to send / listen the communication.
We send a message only to Pepito identifying as Pepito:
$ echo "Hello Juanito, I'm Pepito" | lancat -n Pepito -u Juanito
We receive messages intended only to Juanito that only Pepito sends:
$ lancat -l -q -n Juanito -u Pepito
Hello Juanito, I'm Pepito