Machine network names

[J. Landman Gay]

Devin Asay wrote:
 > Jacque,
 >
 > I'm tardy here, but didn't see any replies.
 >
 > Could you write a shell script that ssh'ed to the remote machine,
 > then check the $HOST variable. Kinda roundabout, I know.
 >
 > Or how about just getting the number of bytes of data on each disk.
 > Not guaranteed to be unique, but the chances of duplicated numbers
 > would be miniscule.

And Andre Garzia also wrote:

 > Is this program running on remote machine or local machine wondering
 > about a remote connection?
 >
 > Some way to do this is by using reverse dns lookup. you can use "host
 > <ip address>" on a shell command to resolve it back to the hostname
 > but this works only with registered ips. From your email I thing
 > you're mounting remote volumes (which might have the same name) and
 > trying to give each of them their own unique ID. Well why not
 > pregenerate tons of unique IDs and assigning them as temporary files
 > on the remote volumes, this way you could just query /RemoteVolume/
 > myUniqueID.txt and see who is who... don't know, this feels like a
 > hack. What are you trying to do and what information you have on the
 > remote machines?


You guys are too geeky. :) I figured out way to do it, I think.

What I'm doing: I need to create an encrypted ID that is tied to a 
particular machine, for licensing purposes, which is why I need a 
machine-unique identifier. However, the program also needs to run from a 
server. So, I need to get the identity of the host machine so that I can 
calculate a correct ID.

After some googling, I found that all the machine-specific info on an OS 
X installation is stored in this file:

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

The file exists on all versions of OS X I have checked, back to at least 
early Jaguar. It has "read" privileges for everyone. Once I discovered 
that, it was a simple matter to write a handler that just opens the file 
on the server, reads it, and parses out the machine info. No shell 
commands or anything else necessary, just plain Transcript.

What I eventually decided to use for the unique machine ID -- instead of 
its network name -- was the host machine's MAC address. This handler 
gets that info, regardless of whether the program is running locally or 
remotely:

function getmachineID
   -- get the host's MAC address whether running locally or from server:
   put the address into tAddr
   set the itemDel to slash
   if tAddr contains "Volumes/" and CDPath() is not in tAddr then -- 
assume running on server
     put "/" & item 2 to 3 of tAddr into tConfigPath
   else -- local copy, or from CD
     put empty into tConfigPath
   end if
   put "/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist" 
after tConfigPath
   put "" into tMacAddr
   if there is a file tConfigPath then
     put url ("file:"&tConfigPath) into tConfig
     put line lineoffset("MACAddress",tConfig)+1 of tConfig into tMacAddr
     delete char 1 to offset(">",tMacAddr) of tMacAddr
     delete char offset("<",tMacAddr) to -1 of tMacAddr
   end if
   return tMacAddr -- empty if failed
end getmachineID

The CDPath() function just returns a string consisting of the path to 
the install CD (just in case it is in the drive.) This handler seems to 
work so far, but if anyone notices any snafus I haven't considered, it 
would be good to know.

 >
 > On Oct 3, 2005, at 5:00 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:
 >
 >> I want to know the network name of a remote machine on a network.
 >> For a local machine, I can get "the address" and the first part of
 >> the address is the name I'm looking for.  But on a remote, mounted
 >> volume "the address" doesn't include its machine name. Any ideas? I
 >> only need this for Mac OS X, but it has to work for all but the
 >> earliest versions of OS X.
 >>
 >> If I can't easily get the network name, then any unique identifying
 >>  info would do. I considered getting the machine ID using Ken Ray's
 >>  "stsGetSerialNumber" handler, but it only returns the serial
 >> numbers of local hard drives.
 >>
 >> The only requirements are: it has to be a unique identifier, and it
 >>  has to be obtainable both remotely and locally.
 >>
 >> -- Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
 >> HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com
 >> _______________________________________________ use-revolution
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-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com