IP Address Configuration in UBUNTU

IP Addressing

The following section describes the process of configuring your systems IP address and default gateway needed for communicating on a local area network and the Internet.

Temporary IP Address Assignment

For temporary network configurations, you can use standard commands such as ip, ifconfig and route, which are also found on most other GNU/Linux operating systems. These commands allow you to configure settings which take effect immediately, however they are not persistent and will be lost after a reboot.

To temporarily configure an IP address, you can use the ifconfig command in the following manner. Just modify the IP address and subnet mask to match your network requirements.

sudo ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.100 netmask 255.255.255.0

To verify the IP address configuration of eth0, you can use the ifconfig command in the following manner.

ifconfig eth0

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:c5:4a:16:5a 

          inet addr:10.0.0.100  Bcast:10.0.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

          inet6 addr: fe80::215:c5ff:fe4a:165a/64 Scope:Link

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:466475604 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:403172654 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:2574778386 (2.5 GB)  TX bytes:1618367329 (1.6 GB)

          Interrupt:16

To configure a default gateway, you can use the route command in the following manner. Modify the default gateway address to match your network requirements.

sudo route add default gw 10.0.0.1 eth0

To verify your default gateway configuration, you can use the route command in the following manner.

route -n

Kernel IP routing table

Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface

10.0.0.0        0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     1      0        0 eth0

0.0.0.0         10.0.0.1        0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

If you require DNS for your temporary network configuration, you can add DNS server IP addresses in the file/etc/resolv.conf. The example below shows how to enter two DNS servers to /etc/resolv.conf, which should be changed to servers appropriate for your network. A more lengthy description of DNS client configuration is in a following section.

nameserver 8.8.8.8

nameserver 8.8.4.4

If you no longer need this configuration and wish to purge all IP configurations from an interface, you can use the ip command with the flush option as shown below.

ip addr flush eth0

Note:
	Flushing the IP configuration using the ip command does not clear the contents of /etc/resolv.conf. You must remove or modify those entries manually.

Dynamic IP Address Assignment (DHCP Client)

To configure your server to use DHCP for dynamic address assignment, add the dhcp method to the inet address family statement for the appropriate interface in the file /etc/network/interfaces. The example below assumes you are configuring your first Ethernet interface identified as eth0.

auto eth0

iface eth0 inet dhcp

By adding an interface configuration as shown above, you can manually enable the interface through the ifup command which initiates the DHCP process via dhclient.

sudo ifup eth0

To manually disable the interface, you can use the ifdown command, which in turn will initiate the DHCP release process and shut down the interface.

sudo ifdown eth0

Static IP Address Assignment

To configure your system to use a static IP address assignment, add the static method to the inet address family statement for the appropriate interface in the file /etc/network/interfaces. The example below assumes you are configuring your first Ethernet interface identified as eth0. Change the address, netmask, and gateway values to meet the requirements of your network.

auto eth0

iface eth0 inet static

address 10.0.0.100

netmask 255.255.255.0

gateway 10.0.0.1

By adding an interface configuration as shown above, you can manually enable the interface through the ifup command.

sudo ifup eth0

To manually disable the interface, you can use the ifdown command.

sudo ifdown eth0

Loopback Interface

The loopback interface is identified by the system as lo and has a default IP address of 127.0.0.1. It can be viewed using the ifconfig command.

ifconfig lo

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback 

          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0

          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1

          RX packets:2718 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:2718 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:183308 (183.3 KB)  TX bytes:183308 (183.3 KB)

By default, there should be two lines in /etc/network/interfaces responsible for automatically configuring your loopback interface. It is recommended that you keep the default settings unless you have a specific purpose for changing them. An example of the two default lines are shown below.

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback