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The question says it all. I have a NAS which was working quite well for quite some time. For some or other reason I started using smb instead of ftp.

Now I can no longer access the configuration dashboard of the NAS. I am not sure what I messed up, but I do not know the IP address of the NAS anymore.

How can I find the IP address of the NAS?

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Still looking for a nicer answer or something? –  Seth Feb 1 at 20:37
@Seth I was hoping geeMc would upgrade his answer. You're right let me accept an answer. –  don.joey Feb 1 at 21:59

2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote accepted

If you want a sophisticated or permanent solution, Bonjour protocol may fit, you can see its implementation in Linux Avahi. So you can point to your NAS as hostname.local or use Avahi Discover to get IP's and all services published in the network. (printers, ftp, smb, ssh...)

  • Minimum installation for client side (your machine):

    sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon avahi-dnsconfd avahi-discover avahi-utils

    avahi-dnsconfd listens to the publishing and passes them to resolvconf. So you can point to the server as nashostname.local. as any other real public domain name. You can use it with http (firefox), samba share, ftp,...


    $ ping salah-Aspire-5738.local
    PING salah-Aspire-5738.local ( 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from salah-Aspire-5738.local ( icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=6.09 ms
    $ nmap salah-Aspire-5738.local
    Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-01-30 15:31 CET
    Nmap scan report for salah-Aspire-5738.local (
    Host is up (0.066s latency).
    All 1000 scanned ports on salah-Aspire-5738.local ( are closed
    Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 4.91 seconds

    avahi-discover & avahi-utils, GUI & CLI, are the user interact tool. They are optional in case you want to list all services published on the network.

    Avahi Discover showcase

    Avahi Discover showcase

  • For NAS server side, if it is a Ubuntu base (Linux/BSD you can build source):

    sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon

    avahi-daemon provide services publishing.

    In case you are using Commercial NAS, many of them support service publishing using Bonjour.

See Avahi (Wikipedia) or its official website.

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I think you mean to say, "for NAS: avahi-discover". Then browse to your NAS in the popup window. –  don.joey Jan 30 at 13:44
@don.joey, I meant the NAS server side, if it is a Ubuntu or Linux machine in general. The avahi-daemon provided publishing service. On client side (your machine), avahi-dnsconfd listens to the publishing and add passes them to resolvconf. So he can point to the server as nashostname.local. avahi-discover & avahi-utils are the user interact tool. Please, let me know if I missed anything or I wasn't clear enough. May be I should add that step on client side? –  Sneetsher Jan 30 at 14:03
@don.joey , I've add examples and explain more. Sorry, I don't have any live real example. The figure show only default services "workstation" and "udisks" –  Sneetsher Jan 30 at 17:39

You could scan your network to see where it is up, e.g. nmap -sP where obviously you should change the network to your own. Then you'll get a list of devices which are up and running.

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Excellent. Your answer would be even better if you'd explain how to find the ip address of one's own network. –  don.joey Jan 29 at 14:23

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