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Skip DNS lookup in Java

For an app I'm writing I want to completely avoid DNS host name resolution: I'm using numeric IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and I have no use for lookups. I've googled a bit but I can't find a class that allows me to open a connection without causing a DNS request to occur. Any hints?
TIA

If you invoke InetAddress.getByName() with a name that's not really a name, but is an IP address, Java won't perform the DNS lookup.
Another option is to use InetAddress.getByAddress() like so:
byte[] numericAddress = new byte[]{127,0,0,1};
InetAddress.getByAddress(numericAddress); //Will return an InetAddress that points to 127.0.0.1

Find Computer Name,Operating System name of a given IP address or MAC address In java

Is there a way to find :
computer name
Operating system
hardware type(laptop or desktop)
Of a give IP or MAC address in java. I've been give a task to
get that data. I'd really appreciate a code sample or if you know of any
libraries that can be used. eg :
If I were to use an IP address of a computer on the same network. I would like to know the name of the computer and which OS they are using and other hardware metadata if that's possible.

If you're trying to find out the hostname associated with an IP address, use InetAddress#getHostName(), though that will only work if the local network has hosts registered for reverse DNS. Finding out another host's OS requires either a service you run that tells you or inference through fingerprinting, which isn't available from Java and isn't entirely reliable.

Getting the mac
The proper way to do this is to use the ARP protocol, but that resides at the Data Link Layer to which Java provides no direct API access. So you'd have to go native for a good solution. Use jNetPcap to gain access to this.
Getting computer name and OS
This would require you to tap into some protocol that provides that data. NBT provides this kind of data.

import java.util.Map;
public class EnvMap {
public static void main (String[] args) {
Map<String, String> env = System.getenv();
for (String envName : env.keySet()) {
System.out.format("%s=%s%n",
envName,
env.get(envName));
}
}
}
I guess you need the following properties:
COMPUTERNAME
OS
regarding MAC Addrss and IP Address you have 2 options:
use
InetAddress ip;
try {
ip = InetAddress.getLocalHost();
System.out.println("Current IP address : " + ip.getHostAddress());
} catch (UnknownHostException e) {
e.e.printStackTrace();
}
or use ipconfig/ifconfig output but I'll leave the choice it to you

why ip address differs when wireless is off?

public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
InetAddress myIp = null;
try {
myIp = InetAddress.getLocalHost();
} catch (UnknownHostException ex) {
System.out.println("Exception cought.");
System.exit(0);
}
System.out.println(myIp);
}
}
I have this simple question that why my ip address is different when my wireless is off?
it's still the same computer, so why does it change? (isn't this a unique number?)

The IP address of the computer depends on the network it's connected to (and indeed, the same machine may have more than one, if it has multiple adapers).
So if I connect my machine to one of my networks, it may have the address 192.168.10.7 whereas on another of my networks, it may be 192.168.17.12. It can vary between connections as well, although in practice they tend to be a bit sticky. (It depends on how the DHCP server is configured.)
Your adapter can be configured with a fixed address, but if you do that, it has to be an address the network it's connecting to has reserved for it. Otherwise it may not work at all ("No route to host") or may conflict with another machine using the network.

.An IP address is the address of a network adapter within a specific local network.
It will be different when connected to different networks.
When not connected to any network, it will either be a link-local address or an auto-configuration address.
You might want the MAC address, which is the hardware address of a single network adapter and is not very likely to change.

The provided code returns HOSTNAME/IP-Address(xx.xx.xx.xx).
Hostname is your computer name ex: MY-PC and then you get the IP corresponding to it.
When you are connected to a network, InetAddress.getLocalHost() asks the DHCP server in the network "what is the address of MY-PC (the name of your computer)", the DHCP replies -> 33.44.55.66
Try the following CMD commands when both connected and disconnected.
\>hostname
MY-PC
\>nslookup MY-PC
44.55.66.77
When you are not connected to a network there are two possibilities:
You do not get a hostname (default is localhost)
You do get a hostname, but there is no DHCP server on the network to return an IPaddress,
so you get loopback - 127.0.0.1
If you want to "call" your computer on the network locally, use the loopback http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/57812/loopback-address
Hope this helps

No. You're confusing IP and MAC addresses. The MAC address is a serial number of hardware(but may be programatically changed on certain chipsets).
The IP address is either software-determined or determined by the network. It can differ between networks or even with time.

IP addresses are (usually) interface specific, not machine specific.
If your machine only has one interface the difference is moot, but it matters if (for example) you have both wired and wireless ethernet.
Also note that if you do have both and attempt to use them both at the same time on the same subnet that things will likely get very confused!

Using which network interface each Java program uses?

If I have 2 public IPs on a linux system they get represented as virtual network interface names. This is what Linode says about it.
Linodes have one network interface, eth0. When you add IP addresses,
you create virtual network interfaces named eth0:1, eth0:2... eth0:n.
I need to use 2 different Java apps on the same Linode and I want each of them to use a different public IP. I would need to specify which network interface each Java instance uses. Would this be possible? I'm using Debian Linux.

You can use the ServerSocket(int port, int backlog, InetAddress address) constructor to create a server socket bound to a particular IP address (3rd parameter). The address determines the network interface that will be used.
For example:
String ip = "192.168.1.54"; // read from config file
int port = 9090; // likewise
InetAddress addr = InetAddress.getByName(ip);
ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket(port, -1, addr);
If you have two different apps and two different IP addresses you'll likely want one app to always use one IP, and the other app to always use the other one. To make sure this association doesn't change you should store the IP address each app is supposed to use in a configuration file or something similar.

Cannot get hostname from getHostName

I am trying to get hostname/computer name using this method. Unfortunately i only can get localhost but not other computer.
private String getHostName(String _strIP) {
try {
InetAddress inetAddress = InetAddress.getByName(_strIP);
System.out.println("getHostAddress : " + inetAddress.getHostAddress());
System.out.println("getHostName : " + inetAddress.getHostName());
System.out.println("getCanonicalHostName : " + inetAddress.getCanonicalHostName());
return inetAddress.getHostName();
} catch (UnknownHostException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
return strDefaultHostName;
}
the result (not localhost)
getHostAddress : 192.168.2.139
getHostName : 192.168.2.139
getCanonicalHostName : 192.168.2.139
the result (localhost)
getHostAddress : 127.0.0.1
getHostName : localhost
getCanonicalHostName : localhost
Thank you

We've established roughly what the problem is in tangens' answer.
I think you can fix the problem pretty simply by putting host names into your hosts file.
%SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
is the file you're looking for; localhost is defined here. You want to put a name and address line in it for every host you want to resolve.
I've never tried this. If it doesn't work, you get your money back.
Update
The above is the "quick hack" solution. This essentially entails that whenever someone manually changes the IP address of a host you're interested in, someone must at the same time change the hosts files on any machines that want to access those hosts.
The other alternative is to operate your own DNS server. You still need to update IP addresses when a host's address changes, but you only need to do so in one place, and you get both forward and reverse name resolution throughout your network. This takes more setting up but is easier to maintain in the long run.
Here is a very useful reference: http://www.dns.net/dnsrd/servers/windows.html
They mention that the "built in" Microsoft DNS server is a terrible solution (up until the one in Windows 2003 Server) but mention at least two alternatives, one commercial and one free. BIND is what is currently holding much of the Internet together, DNS-wise, and it's great that they have a Windows port too.

Looking at the source for InetAddress.getHostName() (Sun JDK8)...
The method performs the following logic:
Loops through the available sun.net.spi.nameservice.NameService's
Performs a reverse DNS lookup - e.g. 192.168.0.23 -> frodo.baggins.com.au
*Checks with the java.lang.SecurityManager, to see if "we have permission to connect" to hostname
*Performs a forward DNS lookup on the hostname, to prevent spoofing - e.g. frodo.baggins.com.au -> 192.168.0.99
If forward lookup result matches the original address (e.g. 192.168.0.23 == 192.168.0.99?), return hostname, otherwise return getHostAddress()
*If step 3 or 4 throws a SecurityException/UnknownHostException, return getHostAddress()
For me, step #2 successfully resolved the hostname, but failed at step #4 with an UnknownHostException.
TLDR; you must fulfill ALL of the following requirements:
the SecurityManager must provide permission to access the host
you must be able to forward AND reverse DNS lookup your InetAddress
the forward lookup details MUST match the reverse lookup details
Only then will Java give you the hostname.
OR, you could bypass these steps with the following method, and just get the hostname.
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public static String getHostName(InetAddress addr) {
String host = null;
List<NameService> nameServicesImpl = new ArrayList<>();
try {
// do naughty things...
Field nameServices = InetAddress.class.getDeclaredField("nameServices");
nameServices.setAccessible(true);
nameServicesImpl = (List<NameService>) nameServices.get(null);
} catch (Throwable t) {
throw new RuntimeException("Got caught doing naughty things.", t);
}
for (NameService nameService : nameServicesImpl) {
try {
// lookup the hostname...
host = nameService.getHostByAddr(addr.getAddress());
} catch (Throwable t) {
// NOOP: problem getting hostname from this name service, continue looping...
}
}
return host != null ? host : addr.getHostAddress();
}

Your DNS is broken. Then IP-numbers are returned instead.

The javadoc of InetAddress.getCanonicalHostName() says:
Gets the fully qualified domain name for this IP address. Best effort method, meaning we may not be able to return the FQDN depending on the underlying system configuration.
If there is a security manager, this method first calls its checkConnect method with the hostname and -1 as its arguments to see if the calling code is allowed to know the hostname for this IP address, i.e., to connect to the host. If the operation is not allowed, it will return the textual representation of the IP address.
I looks like your system configuration isn't correct. Are you running from within an applet?

Reply Feedback for Carl Smotricz
Great answer, but we still don't know if the host name has been updated or not...
This is something like we hardcode.
Anyway thank you so much
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.2.139 dev-testing

The problem can be caused by multiple reasons.
Reason 1: the IP address doesn't have a hostname
This is probably the most common reason, and has nothing to do with security managers.
If an IP address doesn't resolve to a hostname, because there is no hostname, then you would expect getHostName() to return null or throw a UnknownHostException, but this doesn't happen. Instead getHostName() simply returns the IP address as a string back again. For reasons unknown to me, this common situation is undocumented.
So if the IP address is the same as the result returned by getHostName(), then the hostname doesn't exist.
Detailed explanation
The following JDK code is the cause of this undocumented problem:
https://github.com/openjdk/jdk/blob/jdk-17+35/src/java.base/share/classes/java/net/InetAddress.java#L697
public class InetAddress implements java.io.Serializable {
private static String getHostFromNameService(InetAddress addr, boolean check) {
String host = null;
try {
// first lookup the hostname
host = nameService.getHostByAddr(addr.getAddress());
/* check to see if calling code is allowed to know
* the hostname for this IP address, ie, connect to the host
*/
if (check) {
#SuppressWarnings("removal")
SecurityManager sec = System.getSecurityManager();
if (sec != null) {
sec.checkConnect(host, -1);
}
}
/* now get all the IP addresses for this hostname,
* and make sure one of them matches the original IP
* address. We do this to try and prevent spoofing.
*/
InetAddress[] arr = InetAddress.getAllByName0(host, check);
boolean ok = false;
if(arr != null) {
for(int i = 0; !ok && i < arr.length; i++) {
ok = addr.equals(arr[i]);
}
}
//XXX: if it looks a spoof just return the address?
if (!ok) {
host = addr.getHostAddress();
return host;
}
} catch (SecurityException e) {
host = addr.getHostAddress();
} catch (UnknownHostException e) {
host = addr.getHostAddress();
// let next provider resolve the hostname
}
return host;
}
}
So what happens is that the IP-address is passed to NameService.getHostByAddr() (NameService is a private interface), which has this (private) documentation in the source code:
Lookup the host corresponding to the IP address provided
#param addr byte array representing an IP address
#return {#code String} representing the host name mapping
#throws UnknownHostException if no host found for the specified IP address
So NameService.getHostByAddr() throws an UnknownHostException if the IP doesn't have a hostname, but InetAddress.getHostFromNameService() swallows this exception and instead, it returns the provided IP-address itself!!! IMO it should have let the exception be thrown instead of swallowing it, because swallowing it makes it more difficult for the client to determine whether a hostname exists.
You can check if the IP address has a hostname by using the nslookup commandline tool: nslookup 192.168.2.139. If it returns something like:
** server can't find 139.2.168.192.in-addr.arpa: NXDOMAIN (Linux) or *** can't find 192.168.2.139: Non-existent domain (Windows) then there is no hostname.
Reason 2: a security manager is applied
By default, Java doesn't have a security manager enabled. In that case, this reason doesn't apply.
A security manager is an object that defines a security policy for an application. If you have a security manager and want to find out if it is the cause of your problem, then you should check whether it is allowing you to open a socket to the resolved hostname (if any). To do so, first use nslookup 192.168.2.139 and verify if a hostname is resolved. If no hostname is resolved, then your problem is caused by "Reason 1". If it does resolve to a hostname, for example myhostname, then try this:
SecurityManager sec = System.getSecurityManager();
if (sec != null) {
sec.checkConnect("myhostname", -1);
}
If checkConnect() throws a SecurityException, then a SecurityManager is active and is causing the problem. So then you could look into how you can configure your securityManager to solve the problem.