<SOLVED>Show mac address of wlan0

[Fred Barclay]

How can I show the mac address of my wireless interface, wlan0? I can't seem to track down how to do it online.
I did discover that if I use

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 ${wireless_ap wlan0}

it gives the bssid of the router I'm currently connected to, but that's not really what I'm after.

Thanks!
Fred

[xenopeek]

This command works for me:

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ip -o link show wlan0 | sed -r 's/^.*link\/ether ([^ ]*) .*$/\1/'

The -o option is to have ip output one line. The MAC address is known as the link/ether address so I extract that with sed.

[Fred Barclay]

Hey xenopeek! How would I tie that in with conky? I've tried just adding the code, putting it inside of braces, adding a $ to the beginning... but conky displays the string instead of a value for the mac address.
Thanks!

[xenopeek]

I don't know conky. If it is using bash syntax, you would use:

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$(ip -o link show wlan0 | sed -r 's/^.*link\/ether ([^ ]*) .*$/\1/')

[Fred Barclay]

Didn't show the mac address, only the string of code.
Oh well. Thanks anyway!

[xenopeek]

I Googled "conky execute command example" (found https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Conky/Guid ... _variables) and I think on conky you have to do it like this:

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${exec ip -o link show wlan0 | sed -r 's/^.*link\/ether ([^ ]*) .*$/\1/'}

[mzsade]

Thanks, i used that for my eth0 first in the terminal without the ${exec}, then with it in conky and it works perfectly. This is once too often that i've exploited sed without knowing diddley-squat about it. Reading up on it is now among the first things on my procrastinator's to-do list.
This is now prominently displayed in my conky;

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MAC  Addr $alignc${execi 300 ip -o link show eth0 | sed -r 's/^.*link\/ether ([^ ]*) .*$/\1/'}
Public IP $alignc${execi 300 wget -q -O - checkip.dyndns.org | sed -e 's/[^[:digit:]\|.]//g'}
Local  IP $alignc${addr} 

Even though privacy ranks very low on my Internet priorities, just as a point of academic interest, is it wise to display all 3 publicly? What are the risks? I believe the question is relevant to the thread but if you think it should be pursued in a new one, please ignore.

@Fred, Isn't this "Solved" for you yet?

[Fred Barclay]

@Fred, Isn't this "Solved" for you yet?

Sorry, xeno (and mzsade) I meant to mark it as solved later today. Anyhow, it's working quite well. Thanks!
Xenopeek--that link you posted looks quite interesting. I'm going to read up on it.

[xenopeek]

This is once too often that i've exploited sed without knowing diddley-squat about it. Reading up on it is now among the first things on my procrastinator's to-do list.

I was in the same place. I haven't found a good online source to truly grasp sed but I got this book and it covers all aspects of sed and is very easy to read (and not too thick ): http://www.sed-book.com/