ifup

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: 22 May 2004
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NAME

ifup - bring a network interface up

ifdown - take a network interface down

SYNOPSIS

ifdown [-nv] [--no-act] [--verbose] [-i FILE|--interfaces=FILE] [-e FILE|--exclude=IFACE] -a|IFACE...

DESCRIPTION

The ifup and ifdown commands may be used to configure (or, respectively, deconfigure) network interfaces based on interface definitions in the file /etc/network/interfaces.

OPTIONS

A summary of options is included below.

-a, --all: If given to ifup, affect all interfaces marked auto. Interfaces are brought up in the order in which they are defined in /etc/network/interfaces. If given to ifdown, affect all defined interfaces. Interfaces are brought down in the order in which they are currently listed in the state file. Only interfaces defined in /etc/network/interfaces will be brought down. Note that you can exclude some interfaces from being handled in this by using --exclude
--force: Force configuration or deconfiguration of the interface.
-h, --help: Show summary of options.
-i FILE, --interfaces=FILE: Read interface definitions from FILE instead of from /etc/network/interfaces.
-e IFACE, --exclude=IFACE: Exclude a given interface IFACE from being managed when doing an operation that involves a number of interfaces. It can only be given one string which is supposed to be an interface name. You can exclude more than one interface if the name given is a substring shared by all of them (for example eth will exclude all ethernet interfaces) This option is useful to avoid running "up" or "down" commands for some interfaces when using --all
-n, --no-act: Don't configure any interfaces or run any "up" or "down" commands.
--no-mappings: Don't run any mappings. See interfaces(5) for more information about the mapping feature.
-V, --version: Show copyright and version information.
-v, --verbose: Show commands as they are executed.

EXAMPLES

ifup -a: Bring up all the interfaces defined with auto in /etc/network/interfaces
ifup eth0: Bring up interface eth0
ifup eth0=home: Bring up interface eth0 as logical interface home
ifdown -e lo -a: Bring down all the interfaces defined with auto in /etc/network/interfaces except for those that begin with lo

NOTES

ifup and ifdown are actually the same program called by different names. The program does not configure network interfaces directly; it runs low level utilities such as ifconfig and route to do its dirty work.

FILES

/etc/network/interfaces: definitions of network interfaces See interfaces(5) for more information.
/etc/network/ifstate: current state of network interfaces

KNOWN BUGS/LIMITATIONS

The program keeps records of whether network interfaces are up or down. Under exceptional circumstances these records can become inconsistent with the real states of the interfaces. For example, an interface that was brought up using ifup and later deconfigured using ifconfig will still be recorded as up. To fix this you can use the --force option to force ifup or ifdown to run configuration or deconfiguration commands despite what it considers the current state of the interface to be. The file /etc/network/ifstate must be writable for ifup or ifdown to work properly. If that location is not writable (for example, because the root filesystem is mounted read-only for system recovery) then /etc/network/ifstate should be made a symbolic link to a writable location. If that is not possible then you can use the --force option to run configuration or deconfiguration commands without updating the file. Note that the program does not run automatically: ifup alone does not bring up interfaces that appear as a result of hardware being installed and ifdown alone does not bring down interfaces that disappear as a result of hardware being removed. To automate the configuration of network interfaces you need to install other packages such as hotplug(8) or ifplugd(8).

AUTHOR

The ifupdown suite was written by Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au>.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 03:27:16 GMT, May 01, 2025