LookAround

"I want to SSH into my laptop, but I keep forgetting its IP!!"

Has this ever happened to you?

```text $ ping $(lookaround find-nick laptop) PING 192.168.1.101 (192.168.1.101) 56(84) bytes of data. ...

$ lookaround client

Found 3 peers: 11:11:11:11:11:11 = 192.168.1.101 laptop 22:22:22:22:22:22 = 192.168.1.102 desktop 33:33:33:33:33:33 = 192.168.1.103 old-laptop ```

LookAround is a Rust program for looking up your computers' MAC and IP addresses within a LAN. There's no central server, so it's not a look-up, it's a look-around.

Installing

Make sure Cargo is installed from RustUp.

```bash

Install LookAround with Cargo

cargo install lookaround

Find your config directory

Prints something like Using config dir "/home/user/.config/lookaround"

lookaround config ```

Create the files client.ini and/or server.ini in that directory (e.g. /home/user/.config/lookaround/server.ini)

```ini

Clients can store MAC-nickname pairs in client.ini, like a hosts file.

This is useful if your servers are short-lived and you want the clients

to be the source of truth for nicknames.

[nicknames] 11-11-11-11-11-11 = laptop 22-22-22-22-22-22 = desktop ```

```ini

Long-lived servers can have their nickname configured in server.ini

[server] nickname = my-computer ```

Auto-Start (Linux)

Put this systemd unit in ~/.config/systemd/user/lookaround.service:

```ini [Unit] Description=LookAround

[Service] ExecStart=/home/user/.cargo/bin/lookaround server Restart=always

[Install] WantedBy=default.target ```

Then start the service, check that it's running okay, and enable it for auto-start:

bash systemctl --user start lookaround systemctl --user status lookaround systemctl --user enable lookaround

Auto-Start (Windows)

(untested)

• Create a shortcut to the LookAround exe
• Change the shortcut's target to end in lookaround.exe server so it will run the server
• Cut-paste the shortcut into the Startup folder in C:\ProgramData\somewhere

Usage

Run the server manually: (To test before installing)

bash lookaround server --nickname my-computer

On a client computer:

```bash

Use the find-nick subcommnad to find an IP...

lookaround find-nick laptop

Prints 192.168.1.101

Or ping it...

ping $(lookaround find-nick laptop)

Or SSH to it...

ssh user@$(lookaround find-nick laptop)

Or pull a file from it

(after starting nc -l -p 9000 < some-file on the laptop)

nc $(lookaround find-nick laptop) 9000

Use the client subcommand to find all servers in the same multicast domain

lookaround client

Use a longer timeout if servers need more than 500 ms to respond

lookaround client --timeout-ms 1000 ```

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. This is a hobby project, so I may reject contributions that are too big to review.

Use the kazupon Git commit message convention

License

AGPL-3.0

This Git repo

This repo's upstream is https://six-five-six-four.com/git/reactor/lookaround. It's mirrored on my GitHub, https://github.com/ReactorScram/lookaround

I don't use GitHub issues, so issues are in issues.md in the repo.