Table of Contents

• About the project
  • Build and install
  • Usage
    • maclookup
    • macrandom
    • update of the database
  • Input
• How does it work
• License
• Contact

macutils

macutils is a suite of tools designed to manipulate mac addresses. It is made of 2 tools:

• maclookup
• macrandom

maclookup

maclookup queries the iee's oui.txt database to find the manufacturer of a network interface.

macrandom

macrandom generates a valid mac address (with a valid manufacturer) using the iee's oui.txt database.
This is unlike most internet based tools, which only generate a fully random mac address, which very often corresponds to no real manufacturer.

Build and install

Install dependencies (fedora):

sudo dnf install libcurl-devel curl

Build the project:

make

Install:

sudo make install

By default, maclookup is installed in /usr/bin/maclookup and macrandom in installed in /usr/bin/macrandom. During installation, the latest oui.txt will also be downloaded from the iee website : http://standards-oui.ieee.org/oui/oui.txt and installed in /usr/local/share/maclookup.

Uninstall:

sudo make uninstall

A manual is also installed for each tool in both english and french in /usr/local/share/man. It can be consulted with the following commands:

man maclookup

and

man macrandom

Usage

Since maclookup creates a local copy of the oui.txt database on the host, all macutils tools can be used offline. It is however necessary to have an internet connection to update the database.

maclookup

maclookup is designed for a quick usage in a terminal:

The classical usage is the following:

$ maclookup 7C-F9-A0-66-EE-94
7C-F9-A0   (hex)                Fiberhome Telecommunication Technologies Co.,LTD
7CF9A0     (base 16)            Fiberhome Telecommunication Technologies Co.,LTD
                                No.5 DongXin Road
                                Wuhan  Hubei  430074
                                CN

It can also be used in a data pipe:

$  echo "7C-F9-A0-66-EE-94" | maclookup -s
7C-F9-A0   (hex)                Fiberhome Telecommunication Technologies Co.,LTD
7CF9A0     (base 16)            Fiberhome Telecommunication Technologies Co.,LTD
                                No.5 DongXin Road
                                Wuhan  Hubei  430074
                                CN

To obtain help, you can type:

maclookup --help

macrandom

The classical usage is the following:

$ macrandom 
-------------------------------------------------

Randomly generated mac address: C8-8D-83-AC-0B-39

-------------------------------------------------

Manufacturer informations:

C8-8D-83   (hex)                HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO.,LTD
C88D83     (base 16)            HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO.,LTD
                                No.2 Xin Cheng Road, Room R6,Songshan Lake Technology Park
                                Dongguan    523808
                                CN

To obtain help, you can type:

macrandom --help

Update of the database

We can update the oui.txt database using the following command:

sudo maclookup -u

A backup of the database is created during update. If the update is interrupted, the backup will be restored.

Input

macrandom takes no input.

The input of maclookup is a valid full length mac address or the first 8 characters (manufacturer prefix).

How does it work

macutils tools use the iee's oui.txt database. It identifies all the manufacturers of network interfaces, with their 6 hexadecimal digits prefix.

Both macrandom and maclookup read this database to find a manufacturer prefix.

The database is downloaded during install using curl. Later updates are done using libcurl.

License

Distributed under GPL License. See COPYING for more information.

Contact

Mathias Schmitt - mathiaspeterhorst@gmail.com
Project link: https://github.com/mphschmitt/macutils