DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / plc-utils-extra / plcID.1.en
plcID(1) Qualcomm Atheros Open Powerline Toolkit plcID(1)

plcID - Echo Device Key

plcID [options] [device] [device] [ ... ]

This program prints a single powerline device key or HFID on stdout. It can be used to dynamically define environment variables or insert command line arguments in scripts at runtime. It is intended to echo a specific key read from a single device but it can be used to echo a specific key type read from several devices by specifying either the Qualcomm Atheros Local Management Address or a broadcast address.

This program is, in some sense, the inverse of modpib but it reads the key and HFID directly from the powerline device instead of reading from a PIB file.

This program is part of the Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit. See the plc man page for an overview and installation instructions.

-A
Prints the Ethernet address (MAC) for each specified device. This option and options -D, -M, -N, -S and -U are mutually exclusive.

-D
Prints the Device Access Key (DAK) for each specified device. This option and options -A, -M, -N, -S and -U are mutually exclusive.

-e
Redirects stderr messages to stdout. By convention status and error messages are printed on stderr while primary program output is printed on stdout. This option prints all output on stdout in cases where this is desired.

Select the host Ethernet interface. All requests are sent via this host interface and only reponses received via this host interface are recognized. The default interface is eth1 because most people use eth0 as their principle network connection; however, if environment string "PLC" is defined then it takes precedence over the default interface. This option then takes precedence over either default.

-n
Append a newline to the end of each key. Newlines are omitted by default so that program output can be used as the raw input to another program. If you want the newline then you must request it with this option.

-M
Prints the Network Membership Key (NMK) for each specified device. This option and options -A, -D, -N, -S and -U are mutually exclusive.

-N
Prints the network HFID string for each specified device. This option and options -A, -D, -M, -S and -U are mutually exclusive.

-q
Suppresses status messages on stderr.

-S
Prints the manufacturer HFID string for each specified device. This option and options -A, -D, -M, -N and -U are mutually exclusive.

Read timeout in milliseconds. Values range from 0 through UINT_MAX. This is the maximum time allowed for a response. The default is shown in brackets on the program menu.

-v
Print additional information on stdout. In particular, this option dumps incoming and outgoing packets which can be saved as text files for reference.

Cause the program to exit on the first error instead of continuing with remaining iterations, operations or devices. Normally, the program reports errors and moves on to the next operation, iteration or device depending on the command line.

-?,--help
Print program help summary on stdout. This option takes precedence over other options on the command line.

-?,--version
Print program version information on stdout. This option takes precedence over other options on the command line. Use this option when sending screen dumps to Atheros Technical Support so that they know exactly which version of the Linux Toolkit you are using.

The MAC address of some powerline device. More than one address may be specified. If more than one address is specified then operations are performed on each device in turn. The default address is local. See DEVICES for information about symbolic device addresses.

Powerline devices use Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) addresses. A MAC address is a 48-bit value entered as 12 hexadecimal digits in upper, lower or mixed character case. Octets may be separated with colons for clarity. For example, "00b052000001", "00:b0:52:00:00:01" and "00b052:000001" are valid and equivalent.

The following MAC addresses are special and may be entered by name instead of number.

Same as "broadcast".

A synonym for the Ethernet broadcast address, FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. All devices, whether local, remote or foreign recognize messages sent to this address. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.

A synonym for the Qualcomm Atheros vendor specific Local Management Address (LMA), 00:B0:52:00:00:01. All local Atheros devices recognize this address but remote and foreign devices do not. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.

See the Qualcomm Atheros HomePlug AV Firmware Technical Reference Manual for more information.

Atheros HomePlug AV Vendor Specific Management Message Entry structure and content is proprietary to Qualcomm Atheros, Ocala FL USA. Consequently, public information may not be available. Qualcomm Atheros reserves the right to modify message structure and content in future firmware releases without any obligation to notify or compensate users of this program.

The following example prints the DAK of the local device on stdout. The local device is interrogated because no MAC address was specified. The default interface, eth1 on Linux and 2 on Windows, is used unless environment variable PLC is defined. The DAK is always printed by default. Depending on your system, you may want to use option -n when using this program interactively.


# plcID
00:11:22:33:44:55:66:77:88:99:AA:DD:CC:DD:EE:FF

The following example prints the NMK of device 00:B0:52:DA:DA:57 connected to interface eth2 on a Linux system. Several devices could be specified but that is not a common request.


# DAK -Mi eth2 00:B0:52:DA:DA:57
F4:23:71:4A:51:39:C2:2D:E5:EA:87:43:99:A1:37:81

The following example dynamically inserts the DAK and NMK of the previous device on the command line of another program. In this example, we want to insert the DAK and NMK into PIB file abc.pib using program modpib. See the modpib man page for an explanation of command line syntax. See the GNU bash manuals for an explanation of why this works.


# modpib abc.pib -D $(plcID -Di eth2 00:B0:52:DA:DA:57) -N $(plcID -Mi eth2 00:B0:52:DA:DA:57)

The following example is an alternate way of accomplishing the same thing using shell script variables. This method may be easier to read and maintain. Notice that we 'squished' all the options together for brevity.


# PLC=00:B0:52:DA:DA:57
# DAK=$(plcID -Dieth2 ${PLC})
# NMK=$(plcID -Mieth2 ${PLC})
# modpib abc.pib -D ${DAK} -N ${NMK}

plc(1), plcboot(1), plcinit(1), plctool(1)


Charles Maier

November 2013 open-plc-utils-0.0.3