How to discover hostname on iPad/iPhone?


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Old 02-26-15, 09:04 AM
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How to discover hostname on iPad/iPhone?

My brother is always coming to my house and asking if he can get on my WiFi network. The problem is, I use MAC and hostname security to control access, and he's got Apple products (iPhone & iPad). I've managed to find the MAC addresses but can't figure out how to discover the hostname on either device. I'm UNIX-literate, so I figure I could find it from command line, but neither can I find how to get to a terminal window in either device.

So what's the simplest way to discover the hostname on a iPhone/iPad, or access a terminal window. I did find one reference stating you can't get to terminal window without an add-on app, but I can't believe Apple is that stupid.

Any ideas?
 
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Old 02-26-15, 10:57 AM
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My devices seam to follow these rules about stripping special characters and adding the dash.

ios - How does the iPad expose its host name over the network? - Ask Different

smithj's Ipad becomes smithjs-ipad
 
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Old 02-26-15, 11:32 AM
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Those answers all assume the device already is networked, which this device is not. I need a means of drilling down into its GUI (or accessing command line) to find out what it calls itself.
 
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Old 02-26-15, 12:25 PM
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Definitely not my forum but if you see the mac addresses of those items that should be enough to ok them access.
 
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Old 02-27-15, 04:24 AM
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Settings, General, About, Name. Take out any punctuation, spaces, and special characters to get the name of the device. For example, Rick's 12345 would become Ricks12345. If he adds "ipad" or "iphone" to the device name you have to add a hyphen and include the i-device: Ricks12345-ipad

The MAC address is found at Settings, General, WiFi Address.
 
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Old 03-03-15, 07:31 AM
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Old 03-07-15, 10:33 AM
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So how do I input UNIX commands when there's no terminal window?
 
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Old 03-07-15, 04:17 PM
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iPhone & ipad: settings, wifi & choose from list.
macbook pro: on top, towards the right, click on triangle, to list available wifi connections & choose one. If you don't have the ssid of your connection, chances are that it's the connection with the strongest signal or look on the router itself. It should be on the label.

Those ^^ instructions are from a friend who has Apple products. The only thing that I know is the OSX has a FreeBSD terminal
 
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Old 03-07-15, 06:25 PM
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So how do I input UNIX commands when there's no terminal window?
I think I read somewhere that a Unix-like shell is not available for users of the iPhone (I don’t have an iPhone). Apparently the iPhone OS “IOS” doesn’t provide a shell to the user- but does to some apps. So I guess certain apps could extend the shell to the user if they wanted to.

It’s been many years since I developed software on Unix (SCO Unix, history now, lol) but from what I remember I don’t see how a Unix shell would be of much use to a iPhone user, that’s more for developers I think, although the point about finding the host name seems noteworthy.

But finding the host name you would think would just be part of the normal user interface. I guess maybe what Rick said in post #5 is the answer. (Maybe I’ll get an iPhone for my birthday,lol)
 
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Old 03-08-15, 07:39 AM
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I doubt that the Unux interface is available on the iPhone but it is available in OSX. I think Android has it too. The idea was so that Fred could simply 'find' the host name. In that case the command would be in FreeBSD & the shell in OSX:
ifconfig wlan0 up scan if all the drivers were already in the kernel. If not, go to:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books...-wireless.html
 
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Old 03-09-15, 03:52 AM
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I don't know what the problem is. It has worked for me in a band where four iPads and three iPhones had to connect to a locked-down wireless router on a mixing board network.

Did it not work?
 
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Old 03-09-15, 04:49 AM
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The problem was that his brother was going to visit & he didn't know the host name so that they could use the wifi. The visit probably took place already so I'm sure the thread is dead by now. I used to give my relatives the neighbor's wifi. That way, I didn't have to bother with them on my network.
 
 

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