From: Glen Holcomb <damnbigman@...>
Date: 2008-08-04T22:13:40+09:00
Subject: Re: Determining MAC address

------=_Part_45436_24397786.1217855702903
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 8:31 PM, Pe=F1a, Botp <botp@delmonte-phil.com> wrote=
:

> From: Glen Holcomb [mailto:damnbigman@gmail.com]
> # Thanks for the ARP suggestion, I might be interested.  Some
> # of the machines in question are on the same VLAN however others
> # are not.  Right now the values have to be entered manually and
> # for my area that isn't too big of a pain as I only have around 70
> # machines.  However to go institution wide that would be a giant
> # headache so any automation would be better than none.
>
> arps do not cross beyond networks, you'll have to gather the data fr the
> junctions. if you have access to the routers/switches, you can see the ar=
p
> table. If you use telnet or ssh, you can create a script to automate and
> collate everything. A nice project would be to create a map of your netwo=
rk
> showing wc nodes are connected to wc switch/router...
>
> kind regards -botp
>
>
>
Thanks guys, I don't have direct access to the routers/switches
unfortunately.

This whole thing started as a tool to shutdown certain machines at certain
times in the evening and then wake them (WOL) at a scheduled time in the
morning to be ready for classes.  I only manage three labs so it wasn't a
big deal to input the MAC addresses by hand.  However the larger IT
department here at the school has taken notice and is interested in using i=
t
to manage machines institution wide.

Since they have over a thousand machines they manage the current idea is to
populate both the computer db entries and the group/lab/area db entries fro=
m
LDAP/AD.  Hence my quest for an easily automated way to get MAC addresses,
machine names are easy (LDAP/AD) and IP is also easy, at least assuming DNS
is correct it is.

I've also run into an issue where the machines on the subdomain I work in
give themselves a different IP than that which the DHCP server thinks they
should have in DNS.  Needless to say this has been a ton of fun.  For some
reason the Primary Domain Controller in this domain has different DNS
records from all the other DNS servers and most annoyingly they are
different from the DHCP servers DNS entries for these machines (The main
DHCP server does DNS too).  This is a very Windows problem and is driving m=
e
crazy since I'm not the admin here.

If anyone knows a quick solution to this issue I would consider paying
weekly tribute ;)  If I can't get to the right machine I can't shut it down
remotely.

That would be the ultimate irony, a tool I wrote to manage my equipment onl=
y
working for others in the company (the main IT department).

--=20
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand, Your actions speak
so loud, I can't hear a word you're saying."

-Greg Graffin (Bad Religion)

------=_Part_45436_24397786.1217855702903--