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JiiB
Asked: 2018-05-04 09:06:19 +0800 CST

ifconfig missing after Ubuntu 18.04 install

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I've just installed Ubuntu 18.04 and selected "minimal install". I then tried to run ifconfig in the terminal and got the following message

-bash: ifconfig: command not found

How come the net-tools package is not installed by default any more?

command-line ifconfig ubuntu-minimal 18.04

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    ifconfig is deprecated, and has been so for quite a number of years. The new kid in town is the ip command, which can configure IP's, routes, and everything associated with networks.

    You can install ifconfig with sudo apt install net-tools, if you absolutely need to have it. If not, start learning ip.

    In short, it is removed because you should not use it. It has mediocre IPv6 support, the ip command is a better replacement. I find sources saying ifconfig was deprecated back in 2012, so I'm not surprised it's finally removed.

    You may be able to install it on 18.04, but on future releases it may disappear entirely. I would consider it not being installed by default as a warning shot: learn ip.

    Thus ifconfig is probably in a special class. In previous versions of Ubuntu it was included in minimal installs. It is now being phased out, and you explicitly have to install it. This can not be taken to indicate that any other packages are missing.

    • 206

  2. as addition to @vidarlo answer, you can put alias ifconfig='ip -c a' to .bash_aliases if you have typing habit.

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  3. This makes the copying of IP addies simpler:

    alias ifconfig="ip -c a | sed -e 's/\// \//g'"

    (otherwise that subnet slash prevents doubleclick->select of only the IP)

    • 9

  4. I had to do:

    sudo apt-get install net-tools
sudo apt autoremove

    I guess that the second line be optional.

    My runtime system:
       Operating System: Ubuntu 18.04

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