how to get MAC address for wireless access point?

Question

I have a sources table that has ID and Source(varchar)

1 Facebook
2 Twitter
3 Google

I have incoming data that has Source(varchar) and Views(Int)

Facebook 10
Twitter 12
Reddit 14

I want the kettle job to do this:

1. Check if the source exists in the source table, and if so replace add a field of type INT called sourceID with the respective ID from source
2. If it doesn't exist add it to the source table.

E.g. from the above data the result should be this

sourceID,Views
1,10
2,12
4,14 (Reddit wasn't in the table so it created it and the autoincrement gives it ID 4).

I am having trouble finding the right steps to achieve this

Solution 1

Either connect to the point, and do

iwconfig | grep "Access Point"

or find your access point in the output of

iwlist wlan0 scan

(if you have wireless interface called not wlan0, substitute appropriately).

Solution 2

Use the arping utility with your AP's IP as an argument:

$ arping 192.168.0.1
ARPING 192.168.0.1 from 192.168.0.200 eth0
Unicast reply from 192.168.0.1 [00:48:6C:38:B7:4D]  0.660ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.0.1 [00:48:6C:38:B7:4D]  0.590ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.0.1 [00:48:6C:38:B7:4D]  0.610ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.0.1 [00:48:6C:38:B7:4D]  0.410ms
Sent 4 probes (1 broadcast(s))
Received 4 response(s)

You can see the MAC address in the reply.

Solution 3

linux command

iwlist wlan0 scan

is a very good one, however if you'll have lot's of WIFI AP around (like in the multi-floor buildings) - you'll get the following error message in result:

wlan0    Failed to read scan data : Argument list too long

in this case the only way to get MAC of your AP would be:

sudo iw wlan0 scan | egrep "^BSS|SSID:" |grep -n1 <your AP name>

as an output you'll get following:

104-BSS 44:ce:7d:7b:e7:9e(on wlan0)
105:    SSID: <your AP name>

where 1st line would be the MAC and 2nd line would be your AP name

on MacOSX similar information could be possible to obtain by executing:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Resources/airport -s |grep <your AP name>

as an output you'll get following:

<your AP name> 44:ce:7d:7b:e7:9e -58  1       Y  -- WPA2(PSK/AES/AES) 

Comments

[Admin]

Not programming...

[David Weiser]

@leppie: it could be a programming question, if the asker would say, instead, "in bash, how do I..."

[David Weiser]

@MAMProgr: Do you want to know how to do this in bash, or using the GUI? If you want to use the GUI to do this, this question should be asked on su.

[Admin]

@David: The fact that it is tagged with ubuntu and not some programming platform or language pretty much excludes that hypothesis.

[David Weiser]

@leppie: doesn't the bash shell come with ubuntu? Until the asker gives more information, I don't think there's much of a onclusion that could be drawn.

[Admin]

@David: Shell scripting in such a trivial form is NOT programming.

[so_mv]

Wonderful. Both commands show the access point MAC address.