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user62167
Asked: 2012-07-13 03:36:00 +0800 CST

identify physical network device by interface name in linux

  • 772

I have multiple USB to ethernet devices which are plugged to the same pc.

Is there a way to identify which one is mapped to which eth* network interface via usb port/etc ?

I have tried looking in lsusb and /proc, but haven't found anything useful.

linux networking interface name

3 Answers

  1. The mapping between interface names and devices can be seen in /sys/class/net/

    Example:

    $ ls -la /sys/class/net
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 0 Oct 29 12:49 .
drwxr-xr-x 56 root root 0 Oct 29 12:49 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Oct 29 12:49 eth0 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:19.0/net/eth0
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Oct 29 12:49 lo -> ../../devices/virtual/net/lo

    My eth0 is on a PCI bus, device 0x19, as the symbolic link reveals.

    • 10

  2. If your system uses udev for device management, you can use the following to get device IDs:

    grep -i eth /var/log/udev

    Provided your OS stores the udev activity log there; adjust when necessary.

    • 0

  3. You could unplug it and plug it back in, then check the latest messages in dmesg.

    • -1