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user76678
Asked: 2013-02-21 11:15:41 +0800 CST

Privileges for ifconfig

  • 772

In order to do ifconfig in Linux and change the IP and VIP does it require root privileges?
Or it is also possible to do this via a non-root account?

linux

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You do not need root access to use ifconfig to change IP addresses, only CAP_NET_ADMIN. Let's create a copy of ifconfig with CAP_NET_ADMIN enabled to see this:

    cp /sbin/ifconfig .
sudo setcap cap_net_admin=eip ./ifconfig
./ifconfig eth0 1.2.3.4    # succeeds

# Wouldn't want to leave this copy of ifconfig around,
# It's a security hole!
rm ifconfig
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  2. Yes, you must be root for use ifconfig since it is usually located in /usr/sbin or /sbin directory. Being non-root, ifconfig binary is not even in your PATH environment variable. So, you should be root, or sudo must be set up. But the modern way is to use ip utility from iproute2 packet. You could use it under non-privileged user to see info about links, interfaces and routing. However, you must be root to change the settings.

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  3. This is trivial to test:

    % ifconfig lo 1.2.3.4
SIOCSIFADDR: Permission denied
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied

    So yes, it requires root.

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