Bug#719960: libnet-arp-perl: Net::ARP::arp_lookup always fails (regression)

[Florian Schlichting]

On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 01:19:35PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2013-08-17 12:41:26 +0200, Florian Schlichting wrote:
> > The implementation changed between 1.0.4-1 and 1.0.8-1; whereas before,
> > it would just open /proc/net/arp and look for the IP address, matching
> > the device only when given, it now uses the SIOCGARP ioctl for which a
> > device name is mandatory.
> > 
> > So I think this "works as intended", but one could perhaps ask upstream
> > to provide an option to iterate over several / all available devices, or
> > amend the documentation to explain that undef values are not / no longer
> > supported.
> 
> OK, but indeed this should be documented. I think it would be nice
> if it could iterate over the devices (or get the device directly
> from the IP address, if possible), as the user doesn't necessarily
> know the device in question (even when the user knows the physical
> device, as the device name may have a random value).

I came accross this bug report again the other day, and forwarded it
upstream to see what the Net-ARP author would say. His answer was:

    I am not actively developing in Perl anymore and only fix nasty bugs
    and security issues in that Perl module, but if you would provide a
    working patch I would integrate it.

    (https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=107677)

It is unlikely that I will find the time to develop such a patch myself
in the forseeable future, but I will certainly look at / forward any
contributions by other people (but by all means feel free to work with
upstream directly).

Florian