Get MAC address using shell script

Question

Currently all the solution mentioned for getting the MAC address always use eth0  But what if instead of eth0 my interfaces start with eth1  Also on OS X the interface names are different  Also the interface eth0 may be present but is unused  i e  not active  it doesn t have an IP    So is there a way I could get the MAC address for the first available interface that is Active  i e  it has an inet address  I even don t want one having inet6    For E g   eth0      Link encap Ethernet  HWaddr  lt some addr gt            inet6 addr   lt some addr gt  Scope Link           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU 1500  Metric 123           RX packets 123 errors 123 dropped 123 overruns 123 frame 123           TX packets 123 errors 123 dropped 123 overruns 123 carrier 123           collisions 123 txqueuelen 123            RX bytes 123  123 MB   TX bytes 123  123 KB            Interrupt 123 Memory 00000000-00000000  eth1      Link encap Ethernet  HWaddr  lt some addr gt            inet addr  lt some addr gt   Bcast  lt some addr gt   Mask  lt some addr gt            inet6 addr   lt some addr gt  Scope Link           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU 123 Metric 123           RX packets 123 errors 123 dropped 123 overruns 123 frame 123           TX packets 123 errors 123 dropped 123 overruns 123 carrier 123           collisions 123 txqueuelen 123            RX bytes 123  123 MB   TX bytes 123  123 KB            Interrupt 123 Memory 00000000-00000000   NOTE   I have changed the values of the output   So in this case I want the HWaddr for eth1 and not eth0  How do I find it   Also it should work on all the Linux flavours

User · Answer

I have used command hcicongif with two greps to separate the PC Mac address and I saved the MAC address to variable:

PCMAC=$( hciconfig -a | grep -E 'BD Address:' | grep -Eo '[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}' )

You can also use this command to check if MAC address is in valid format. Note, that only big chars A-F are allowed and also you need to add input for this grep command:

grep -E '[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}:[A-F0-9]{2}'

User · Answer

oh  if you want only the mac ether mac address  you can use that   ifconfig   grep  ether     tr -d       tr -d   t    cut -c 6-42    work on macintosh    ifconfig -- get all info grep -- keep the line with address tr -- clean all cut -- remove the  ether  to have only the address

User · Answer

The best Linux-specific solution is to use sysfs     IFACE eth0   read MAC  lt  sys class net  IFACE address   echo  IFACE  MAC eth0 00 ab cd 12 34 56   This method is extremely clean compared to the others and spawns no additional processes since read is a builtin command for POSIX shells  including non-BASH shells  However  if you need portability to OS X  then you ll have to use ifconfig and sed methods  since OS X does not have a virtual filesystem interface like sysfs

User · Answer

Get MAC adress for eth0     cat  etc sysconfig network-scripts ifcfg-eth0   grep HWADDR   cut -c 9-25   Example    me machine     cat  etc sysconfig network-scripts ifcfg-eth0   grep HWADDR   cut -c 9-25 55 b5 00 10 be 10

User · Answer

Observe that the interface name and the MAC address are the first and last fields on a line with no leading whitespace   If one of the indented lines contains inet addr  the latest interface name and MAC address should be printed   ifconfig -a   awk     a-z     iface  1  mac  NF  next        inet addr     print iface  mac      Note that multiple interfaces could meet your criteria  Then  the script will print multiple lines   You can add   exit just before the final closing brace if you always only want to print the first match

User · Answer

Here s an alternative answer in case the ones listed above don t work for you   You can use the following solution s  as well  which was found here   ip addr   OR  ip addr show   OR  ip link   All three of these will show your MAC address es  next to link ether   I stumbled on this because I had just done a fresh install of Debian 9 5 from a USB stick without internet access  so I could only do a very minimal install  and received   -bash  ifconfig  command not found   when I tried some of the above solutions   I figured somebody else may come across this problem as well   Hope it helps

User · Answer

This was the only thing that worked for me on Armbian  dmesg   grep -oE  mac    w     cut -b  5-

User · Answer

On a modern GNU Linux system you can see the available network interfaces listing the content of  sys class net   for example     ls  sys class net  enp0s25  lo  virbr0  virbr0-nic  wlp2s0   You can check if an interface is up looking at operstate in the device directory  For example  here s how you can see if enp0s25 is up     cat  sys class net enp0s25 operstate up   You can then get the MAC address of that interface with     cat  sys class net enp0s25 address  ff 00 ff e9 84 a5   For example  here s a simple bash script that prints MAC addresses for active interfaces      bin bash   getmacifup sh  Print active NICs MAC addresses D   sys class net  for nic in    ls  D   do     echo  nic     if  grep -q up  D  nic operstate     then         echo -n               cat  D  nic address     fi done   And here s its output on a system with an ethernet and a wifi interface       getmacifup sh enp0s25    ff 00 ff e9 84 a5 lo wlp2s0   For details see the Kernel documentation    Remember also that from 2015 most GNU Linux distributions switched to systemd  and don t use ethX interface naming scheme any more - now they use a more robust naming convention based on the hardware topology  see    Predictable Network Interface Names systemd src udev udev-builtin-net id c

User · Answer

ip route show default   awk   default   print  5    return  eth0  my online interface    cat  sys class net   ip route show default   awk   default   print  5    address  return  ec a8 6b bd 55 05  macaddress of the eth0  my online interface  Terminal image

User · Answer

I know that is a little bit dated  but with basic commands  we can take the mac address of an interface   ip link show eth0   grep link ether   awk   print  2     Have a nice day

User · Answer

None of the above worked for me because my devices are in a balance-rr bond  Querying either would say the same MAC address with ip l l  ifconfig  or  sys class net   device  address  so one of them is correct  and one is unknown   But this works if you haven t renamed the device  any tips on what I missed     udevadm info -q all --path   sys class net   device     And this works even if you rename it  eg  ip l set name x0 dev p4p1    cat  proc net bonding bond0   or my ugly script that makes it more parsable  untested driver os whatever compatibility    awk -F                  0        amp  amp  interface                     printf   s  s  s n   interface  mac  status              interface                 mac                           1     Slave Interface                interface  2                        1     Permanent HW addr                mac  2                       1     MII Status                status  2                      END               printf   s  s  s n   interface  mac  status              proc net bonding bond0

User · Answer

Simply run   ifconfig   grep ether   cut -d     -f10   OR  ip a   grep ether   cut -d     -f6   These two example commands will grep all lines with  ether  string and cut the mac address  that we need  following the number spaces  specified in the -f option  of the grepped portion   Tested on different Linux flavors

User · Answer

You can do as follows  ifconfig  lt Interface ex eth0 eth1 gt    grep -o -E      xdigit    1 2    5    xdigit    1 2     Also you can get MAC for all interface as follows  cat  sys class net   address   For particular interface like for eth0  cat  sys class net eth0 address

[linux] Get MAC address using shell script

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