Accessing Mikrotik RouterOS via MAC Telnet from a Linux box

November 18, 2016

If you know Mikrotik Routers you know that you’re able to access them via MAC Telnet (see here for more details) via Layer2 with Winbox. But running Winbox via Wine on a Linux is not that great for using MAC Telnet, and there is a better way .. just use MAC-Telnet from Håkon Nessjøen. On Ubuntu/Debian you can just install the package with

sudo apt-get install mactelnet-client

and you see its feature like this:

$ mactelnet -h
MAC-Telnet 0.4.2
Usage: mactelnet <MAC|identity> [-h] [-n] [-a <path>] [-A] [-t <timeout>] [-u <user>] [-p <password>] [-U <user>] | -l [-B] [-t <timeout>]

Parameters:
MAC MAC-Address of the RouterOS/mactelnetd device. Use mndp to
discover it.
identity The identity/name of your destination device. Uses
MNDP protocol to find it.
-l List/Search for routers nearby (MNDP). You may use -t to set timeout.
-B Batch mode. Use computer readable output (CSV), for use with -l.
-n Do not use broadcast packets. Less insecure but requires
root privileges.
-a <path> Use specified path instead of the default: ~/.mactelnet for autologin config file.
-A Disable autologin feature.
-t <timeout> Amount of seconds to wait for a response on each interface.
-u <user> Specify username on command line.
-p <password> Specify password on command line.
-U <user> Drop privileges to this user. Used in conjunction with -n
for security.
-q Quiet mode.
-h This help.

So lets give it a try, first with searching for my home router

$ mactelnet -l
Searching for MikroTik routers... Abort with CTRL+C.
IP MAC-Address Identity (platform version hardware) uptime
10.x.x.x 0:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx jumpgate (MikroTik x.x.x. xxxx) up 139 days 5 hours XXXXX-XXXX vlanInternal

and then we’ll connect

$ mactelnet 0:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

and we’re connected.

1 Comment »

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1. Hi,

   You can also just type; mactelnet jumpgate instead of copying the mac address.

   😉

   Regards,
   Håkon

   Comment by Håkon — November 19, 2016 #

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