Retrieving network mask in Python

This works for me in Python 2.2 on Linux:

iface = "eth0"
socket.inet_ntoa(fcntl.ioctl(socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM), 35099, struct.pack('256s', iface))[20:24])

Did you look here?

http://docs.python.org/library/fcntl.html

This works for me in python 2.5.2 on Linux. Was finishing it when Ben got ahead, but still here it goes (sad to waste the effort :-) ):

vinko@parrot:~$ more get_netmask.py
# get_netmask.py by Vinko Vrsalovic 2009
# Inspired by http://code.activestate.com/recipes/439093/
# and http://code.activestate.com/recipes/439094/
# Code: 0x891b SIOCGIFNETMASK

import socket
import fcntl
import struct
import sys

def get_netmask(ifname):
        s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
        return socket.inet_ntoa(fcntl.ioctl(s.fileno(), 0x891b, struct.pack('256
s',ifname))[20:24])

if len(sys.argv) == 2:
        print get_netmask(sys.argv[1])
vinko@parrot:~$ python get_netmask.py lo
255.0.0.0
vinko@parrot:~$ python get_netmask.py eth0
255.255.255.0

The netifaces module deserves a mention here. Straight from the docs:

>>> netifaces.interfaces()
['lo0', 'gif0', 'stf0', 'en0', 'en1', 'fw0']

>>> addrs = netifaces.ifaddresses('en0')
>>> addrs[netifaces.AF_INET]
[{'broadcast': '10.15.255.255', 'netmask': '255.240.0.0', 'addr': '10.0.1.4'}, {'broadcast': '192.168.0.255', 'addr': '192.168.0.47'}]

Works on Windows, Linux, OS X, and probably other UNIXes.