Examples of Using ip command

You may have seen the ip command page on this website, and even used ip addr show version of it. Here's a few more really powerful options for ip.

Show Only IPv4 Addresses with ip command

If default ip addr show (or ip a for short) is too much information:

greys@becky:~ $ ip addr show
 1: lo:  mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
     link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
     inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
     inet6 ::1/128 scope host
        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
 2: eth0:  mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
     link/ether b8:27:eb:b5:fb:da brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
     inet 192.168.1.66/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
     inet6 fe80::ba27:ebff:feb5:fbda/64 scope link
        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

…just specify the -4 option (short for IPv4) to only show IPv4 addresses info:

greys@becky:~ $ ip -4 addr show
 1: lo:  mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
     inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
 2: eth0:  mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
     inet 192.168.1.66/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Show Specific Interface with ip command

To further narrow it down and show just info for one of the interfaces, specify it in the command line:

greys@becky:~ $ ip -4 addr show dev eth0
2: eth0:  mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
     inet 192.168.1.66/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global eth0
        valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Show Brief Summary using ip command

Just specify -br option to see just bare essentials for the specified interfaces (or all of them if you're not indicating interface name) – you'll get interface name, status (whether it's UP or DOWN right now) and the assigned IP address:

greys@becky:~ $ ip -br -4 addr
 lo               UNKNOWN        127.0.0.1/8
 eth0             UP             192.168.1.66/24

If I want to just show this for eth0, here's how I do it

greys@becky:~ $ ip -br -4 addr show dev eth0
 eth0             UP             192.168.1.66/24

That's useful enough to learn in case ifconfig command is not found or you simply want to use ip command instead of ifconfig command a bit more.

See Also

• Unix Commands
• Linux Commands
• Basic Linux Commands
• ifconfig
• ip