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README.md

LookAround

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

Has this ever happened to you?

$ 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.

The client uses IP multicast to find servers within the same multicast domain, similar to Avahi and Bonjour.

Systems self-identify by MAC address and nicknames. Public keys with TOFU semantics are intended before v1.0.0.

Installation

Use the Cargo package manager from Rust to install LookAround.

cargo install lookaround

To auto-start the server as a normal user. put this systemd unit in ~/.config/systemd/user/lookaround.service:

[Unit]
Description=LookAround

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/user/.cargo/bin/lookaround server --nickname my-desktop

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

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

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

Usage

Run the server manually: (If you didn't configure auto-start)

lookaround server --nickname my-desktop

On a client computer:

# 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.